Liqid & Broadcom Deliver First PCIe 4.0 RDK

Today Liqid announced that it was working with Broadcom to deliver the first PCI-Express (PCIe) Gen 4.0 Fabric Reference Design Kit (RDK). This RDK should help the adoption of PCIe 4.0 in the data center. The companies have also built managed-fabric solution powered by Liqid Command Center orchestration software and Broadcom PEX88000 PCIe Gen 4.0 switches. This solution is said to enable research and development departments to quickly evaluate and accelerate deployment of Gen 4.0 solutions in the marketplace for next generation data center applications.

Today Liqid announced that it was working with Broadcom to deliver the first PCI-Express (PCIe) Gen 4.0 Fabric Reference Design Kit (RDK). This RDK should help the adoption of PCIe 4.0 in the data center. The companies have also built managed-fabric solution powered by Liqid Command Center orchestration software and Broadcom PEX88000 PCIe Gen 4.0 switches. This solution is said to enable research and development departments to quickly evaluate and accelerate deployment of Gen 4.0 solutions in the marketplace for next generation data center applications.

 

 

 

While PCIe 4.0 sounds like the next step, it actually doubles throughput and can achieve bandwidth of up to 256 GT/s per port, substantially reducing transfer time for big data applications. Lots of companies have capitalized on this with releases of new SSDs, FPGAs, GPUs, and Broadcom has with its PEX88000 PCIe Gen 4.0 family of switches. Now Broadcom and Liqid are working together to help more quickly validate more PCIe 4.0 solutions and bring them to market.

The two companies are working closely to bring what they are calling a comprehensive, feature-rich PCIe Gen 4.0 development platform. This is a purpose-built, turnkey platform that is aimed at enabling rapid prototyping, development, and qualification of solutions leveraging intelligent PCIe Gen 4.0 fabric. The fabric management stack leverages Liqid Command Center composable infrastructure software. Users can test the platform by writing software against Liqid’s RESTful API or using the intuitive user interface.

The PCIe Gen 4.0 Fabric RDK includes all the gear needed to get started with application testing and validation, including:

• 1x Fabric management node
• Liqid Command Center fabric and orchestration software
• 1x 24-Port PCIe Gen 4.0 fabric switch
• 1x PCIe Gen 4.0 expansion chassis
• 2x PCIe Gen 4.0 HBAs
• 17x Mini-SAS HD cables

For this RDK, users can add the desired number of host nodes, GPUs, NVMe SSDs and NICs to available 24 x4 PCIe Gen4 ports for their analysis. The RDK kit can be used with other RDKs in order to expand topology. Liqid and Broadcom’s PCIe Gen 4.0 RDK comes preconfigured out of box and just needs to be connected to power and Internet. Users can test the platform by writing software against Liqid’s RESTful API or using the intuitive user interface.

Liqid

Broadcom

Engage with StorageReview

Newsletter | YouTube | Podcast iTunes/Spotify | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | RSS Feed