HP dx7300 Link Layer, Physical Layer, Table, PCI Express Byte Transfer

System Support

Link Layer

The link layer provides data integrity by adding a sequence information prefix and a CRC suffix to the packet created by the transaction layer. Flow-control methods ensure that a packet will only be transferred if the receiving device is ready to accomodate it. A corrupted packet will be automatically re-sent.

Physical Layer

The PCI Express bus uses a point-to-point, high-speed TX/RX serial lane topology. One or more full-duplex lanes transfer data serially, and the design allows for scalability depending on end-point capabilities. Each lane consists of two differential pairs of signal paths; one for transmit, one for receive (Figure 4-4).

System Board			PCI Express Card
	Device A	TX		Device B
		RX

Figure 4-4. PCI Express Bus Lane

Each byte is transferred using 8b/10b encoding. which embeds the clock signal with the data. Operating at a 2.5 Gigabit transfer rate, a single lane can provide a data flow of 200 MBps. The bandwidth is increased if additional lanes are available for use. During the initialization process, two PCI Express devices will negotiate for the number of lanes available and the speed the link can operate at.

In a x1 (single lane) interface, all data bytes are transferred serially over the lane. In a multi-lane interface, data bytes are distributed across the lanes using a multiplex scheme as shown in Table

4-4:

Table 4-4.

PCI Express Byte Transfer

	x1	x4	x8
	Transfer	Transfer	Transfer
Byte #	Lane #	Lane #	Lane #
0	0	0	0
1	0	1	1
2	0	2	2
3	0	3	3
4	0	0	4
5	0	1	5
6	0	2	6
7	0	3	7

Technical Reference Guide www.hp.com 4-7