PLDA and M31 Technology Combine PCIe 3.0 Controller and PHY IP for a Complete, Reliable ASIC Design Solution

Solution is certified at PCI-SIG; validated on PLDA Kintex-7-based platform XpressK7 with M31 daughter card; optimized for PCIe SSD application

SAN JOSE, CA/ HSINCHU, TAIWAN– January 13, 2015 – PLDA, the company that designs and sells intellectual property (IP) cores and prototyping tools, and M31 Technology, a global silicon intellectual property (SIP) provider, have developed a comprehensive controller-plus-PHY solution for ASIC design projects. The combined solution -- PLDA’s PCIe 3.0 controller in Gen2 XpressRICH3 with M31 Technology’s PHY IP – received certification from PCI-SIG which was validated on PLDA Kintex-7-based platform XpressK7 and M31 Technology’s daughter card. The complete solution is optimized for storage applications.

“To meet tight scheduling and time-to-market deadlines, ASIC designers have long waited for a comprehensive PCIe solution that satisfies PCI-SIG compliance testing and is highly optimized for configurability,” said Stéphane Hauradou, CTO of PLDA. “This combined solution is highly configurable, which results in improved performance and reduced power consumption. Overall, the solution increases design possibilities and cost efficiencies.”

“M31 Technology will focus on developing PCIe 3.0 (8.0 GT/s) for the soon-to-be mature SSD market,” said Scott Chang, R&D vice-president of M31. “By extending the successful development of PCIe 2.0, M31’s PCIe 3.0 PHY will have enhancement of electrical characteristics, as well as compact size and ultra low power consumption. It also supports a wide variety of power management modes to significantly increase customer competitiveness.”

The controller-plus-PHY solution from PLDA and M31 Technology delivers:

• A complete, reliable, PCI-SIG compliant PCIe Controller that supports endpoint, root port, switch, bridge and advanced features such as SR-IOV, multi-function, data protection (ECC, ECRC), ATS, TPH, AER and more…
• Compact die size and very low pad counts that increase the competitiveness of PCI Express 2.0 applications.
• Support for all PCIe PIPE power saving modes (P0, P0s, P1, P2), for ultra-low power operation.
• A rich set of deliverables that eases integration and silicon validation.
• An adaptive equalizer that covers wide range channel loss.
• Single power rail implementation that eases the integration of whole chip power management.

The power conservation and low power process approach in the combined PLDA and M31 Technology solution is especially suitable for enterprise storage product development. High points for the storage domain include:

• An option to make the receive buffer very small, which greatly benefits any design where there is a cluster of EPs and memory size/area becomes a concern.
• Inbuilt CDC using RX buffer and TX buffer, which allows the transaction layer to change its operating frequency dynamically and to optimize for high performance or low power.
• An inbuilt option to automatically insert pipelining when required. This is useful when targeting slower (low power) processes.
• L1 substate and SRIS, which are widely used in SSD.
• Data protection, which can be enabled irrespective of the host enabling ECRC, and which provides complete end-to-end data path protection within the controller-plus-PHYIP.

Availability

The combined solution from PLDA and M31 Technology is available now. PCIe 3.0 Soft IP XpressRICH3, PCIe Prototyping Board and XpressK7 also are available from PLDA now.

About M31 Technology

M31 Technology is a professional silicon intellectual property (SIP) provider. The company was founded in July 2011 with headquarter in Hsinchu, Taiwan. M31’s strength is R&D and customer service. With substantial experience in IP development, IC design and electronic design automation, M31 focuses on providing high-speed interface IP, memory compilers and standard cell library solutions. For more information, please visit www.m31tech.com

About PLDA Group

PLDA designs and sells intellectual property (IP) cores and prototyping tools for ASICs and FPGAs that aim to accelerate time to market for embedded electronic designers. The company specializes in high-speed interface protocols and technologies such as PCIe and Ethernet. PLDA provides IP cores with a complete set of tools, including FPGA production-ready and prototyping cards, system-on-module components, drivers, APIs and testbenches. These products benefit from a global support and sales organization able to sustain over 5,800 ASIC and FPGA customers worldwide. PLDA is a global company with offices in North America (San Jose, California) and in Europe (France, Italy, Bulgaria).