PLX Technology, Inc., a leading global supplier of high-speed connectivity solutions enabling emerging data center architectures, is welcoming attendees of the Intel Developers Forum (IDF), held this week in San Francisco at the Moscone West Convention Center, to witness a live demonstration of how PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3 performance is poised to challenge, replace or enhance all other interconnect technologies in the data center, including SAS, RapidIO, InfiniBand and Ethernet.

The first demonstration utilizes PLX PCIe Gen3 switches to showcase plug-and-play, box-to-box connectivity using cost-effective optical modules, connectors and cables -- without any special hardware or software -- can achieve the high performance required of new data center designs. The demonstration's highlights include a x4 PCIe configuration achieving 32 Gbps throughput via economical mini-SAS HD or dual-optical USB. The demonstration will also prove how "independent SSC" operation can be achieved without spread-spectrum clocking (SSC) isolation, showing that neither clock management, additional clock chips/buffers, nor protocol translations are needed, resulting in simple scalability and connectivity, lower connection costs and higher density.

"PCI Express's high performance and feature-rich product offerings have made it the dominant I/O within the box," said Reginald Conley, vice president, hardware applications, PLX. "With our new Gen3 capabilities, including optical and copper demonstrations, we are now swiftly moving ahead to extend PCI Express outside the box and into new markets. Designers are faced with a wide-variety of options when it comes to high-speed system connectivity, including established competitive technologies like InfiniBand, SAS, and Ethernet, along with new integrated PCI Express architectures from major OEMs, where it has become clear the interest in this method is quickly gaining momentum."

The broad PLX ExpressLane PCIe Gen3 portfolio now includes 14 switches ranging from large 96-lane, 24-port devices to streamlined 12-lane, three-port solutions. Punctuating their market-disrupting performance is the 96-lane PEX8796 switch -- touting bandwidth of 8 Gigatransfers per second, per lane, in full duplex mode -- which enables designs to achieve amazing throughput of 1,536 gigabits per second (192 gigabytes/s). Through this industry-leading lineup of switches, PLX is championing the trend toward external PCIe within the data center rack with its ExpressFabric initiative.

In a second demonstration, PLX will display its industry unique PCI Express Gen2 to SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) bridge solution which showcases several revolutionary applications including USB Duet 3.0 technology as well as high performance storage and display solutions. USB Duet 3.0 technology allows Windows 8 Tablets and Ultrabooks to share resources such as monitors, keyboards, mice, and perform data syncing. Users can also easily connect to another smartphones, Macs, smart TVs, and more -- at 5 Gbps performance! The PLX SuperSpeed USB portfolio now includes two PCIe Gen2-to-USB 3.0 peripheral controller/bridge devices and several SATA-to-USB 3.0 direct attached storage devices.

Visit PLX at booth #512. The IDF showcase will be open exclusively to press and analysts, beginning one hour before the exhibit hall opens to the general public, on Tuesday, September 11, from 4-5pm. For more information and registration to attend IDF, visit www.intel.com/idf.