NPCIe-UPLINK-Q

The NPCIe-Uplink-Q is a PCIe uplink card, which establishes one or two PCIe-link(s) (up tp x16) to a MTCA system with a suitable counterpart e.g, NAT-MCH-PHYS80.

The heart of the NPCIe-Uplink-Q is a Broadcom PEX8733 PCIe switch. With station 0 ports, it connects to the PCIe host via the edge card connector. Station 1 ports are linked to the QSFP-DD transceivers. Depending on the populated transceivers, the NPCIe-Uplink-Q supports opticial uplinks vie QSFP or QSFP-DD, as well as copper connection via DAC (Direct Access Cable).

Populated with QSFP-DD transceiver(s), the NPCIe-Uplink-Q can be configured to use one x16 or two x8 optical uplink(s).

The switch owns a SSC isolation clock input, so it is not mandatory to use a common clock in the whole PCIe hierarchy, even if the host is using a SSC reference clock.

Moreover, the PEX8733 makes a dedicated driver on host side needless, as the required settings can be made via the configuration EEPROM of the switch.

The NPCIe-Uplink-Q features a Lattice MachX02 FPGA as hardware extension of the on-board Atmel ATxmega128 microcontroller. Moreover, it handles PCIe side band signals coming from the edge connector and hot-plugging functionality for the attached MTCA system.

• PCIe interface card (H: 111.15mm, L: 176.6mm)

Processing Resources

• Lattice MachXO2
• SPI EEPROM
• Atmel ATXmega128

PCIe Resources

• PCIe Switch: Broadcom PEX8733
• Optical Uplink via QSFP-DD (one x16 or two x8)

Front Panel

• 1x or 2x front uplinks, depending on chosen transceiver type
• 4 bicolor LED (Green and Red)