NEC Electronics Announces Expansion of PCI Express® Switch ASSP Family
New Four-Port Device Meets Growing Demand for PCI Express Technology

NEC Electronics Corporation today announced the product development of a four-port PCI Express® switch ASSP (product number µPD720403), a new device in the company's expanding portfolio of PCI Express semiconductor solutions. This latest addition will provide NEC Electronics' customers with a standard solution to meet the growing demand for PCI Express, a high-speed interface technology used in servers, workstations and other storage- and network-related applications. NEC Electronics America will showcase a board with a sample of the four-port PCI Express ASSP as well as its other PCI Express products in the company's booth (#10) at the PCI-SIG Developers Conference, June 6-7 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. Demonstrations available at the NEC Electronics America booth include a system-level PCI Express data transfer using an NEC Electronics switch, and a data transfer using a PCI Express to PCI®/PCI-X® bridge.

"NEC Electronics is a leading provider of PCI Express solutions. Our established record of support for this high-performance interface standard began with our launch of the industry's first PCI Express bridge and switch ASSPs. Our switch ASSP was one of the first to complete the PCI-SIG's Compliance Program and be included on the PCI Express Integrators List," said Hiroshi Nakashiba, vice president and general manager, broadband LSI technology strategic business unit, NEC Electronics America. "We are pleased to introduce this new four-port device to help designers meet the power management, multiple interconnect and high-speed data transfer requirements of their enterprise, storage and networking applications."

The new NEC Electronics PCI Express switch ASSP is compliant with revisions 1.0a and 1.1 of the PCI Express base specification and features four ports that can be used as either downstream or upstream ports. The lanes of each port can be configured x1 to x8. The µPD720403 device features support for a maximum of 32 lanes and is available in a 35 x 35, 648-pin BGA package. Like NEC Electronics' earlier six-port PCI Express switch ASSP (product number µPD720401), the µPD720403 four-port ASSP also provides fan-outs that enable designers to use more PCI Express ports in their designs. In addition, both the six-port and four-port switch ASSPs support cut-through switching technology, which results in high performance and low latency.

More information about NEC Electronics' PCI Express products can be found at www.am.necel.com/pciexpress.

PCI Express Technology
PCI Express is a third-generation, scalable I/O (input/output) architecture for use in desktop, mobile, server, communication platform, workstation and embedded devices. As PC and server CPUs and other I/O devices increase in speed, technologies such as PCI Express are needed to ensure that I/O interfaces will not create performance bottlenecks in systems. NEC Electronics' PCI Express ASSPs are compliant with revisions 1.0a and 1.1 of the PCI Express base specification. NEC Electronics' PCI Express IP solutions include transceiver and generic controller cores that include a data link and a transaction layer architecture and enable data transfers to the switch fabric, physical logic layers based on NEC Electronics' serializer/deserializer (SerDes) technology and link layer cores.

Availability
Samples of NEC Electronics' four-port PCI Express switch ASSPs will be available during the second half of 2005. Availability is subject to change.

Related Contents

• PCI Express

About NEC Electronics Corporation

NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) specializes in semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the high-end computing and broadband networking markets, system solutions for the mobile handsets, PC peripherals, automotive and digital consumer markets, and multi-market solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics Corporation has 26 subsidiaries worldwide including NEC Electronics America, Inc. (www.am.necel.com) and NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH www.eu.necel.com). Additional information about NEC Electronics worldwide can be found at www.necel.com.

NEC Electronics is either a registered trademark or trademark of NEC Electronics Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. PCI Express, PCI-X, PCI and PCI-SIG are trademarks or registered trademarks of PCI-SIG. All other registered trademarks or trademarks are the property of their respective owners.