The new Kontron 4U Backplane xPB-13E9P3 for PICMG 1.3-based system designs boasts comprehensive PCI and PCI Express Gen 2 support for full-height 4U systems. With double the PCIe lanes of any previous solution, 32 in total, the PICMG 1.3-compliant backplane tackles bandwidth-intensive applications with its cost-effective and densely-packed design for use with standard PCIe and PCI extension cards.

In order to support any standard PCIe extension card, an integrated non-blocking switch doubles the 16 PCI Express lanes from the system host board (SHB) to the four PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots and the PEG slot on the backplane. The switch is configurable via software, allowing each of the x4 slots to be individually populated with x1, x2 or x4 I/O cards. The PCIe bandwidth can also be routed directly to dedicated ports without disturbing the CPU board. The three PCI slots of the Kontron xPB-13E9P3 allow OEMs to easily leverage existing PCI extension cards.

The Kontron 4U backplane xPB-13E9P3 offers a cost-efficient solution for applications with extreme bandwidth requirements. Designed for highest throughput (5.0 GT/s per PCI express lane) with the latest frame grabbers, graphics and network cards, the full-size backplane was developed for markets such as medical, digital signage, gaming and infotainment applications as well as multi-monitor solutions for surveillance and industrial engineering. The PICMG 1.3 backplane also provides ample resources for applications where multiple video cards are required, such as in test & measurement, digital mock-up and simulation. This also makes the new backplane the perfect host for a GPGPU system for cost-efficient high performance Embedded Computing Tasks (HPEC). All these applications benefit from the double value of the PICMG 1.3 specification which combines the cost efficiency of a motherboard-based solution with the high bandwidth of a complex and densely-packed serial switched backplane system design.

The interfaces in brief

The Kontron xPB-13E9P3 offers 1 x PEG (PCIe x16), 4 x PCIe x4 and 4 x PCIe x1 as well as the PICMG 1.3 slot for the SHB (system host board). Connections for 4 x USB 2.0, 2 x SATA and 1 x LAN round out the interface offerings of the PICMG 1.3 backplane.

The new Kontron 4U Backplane xPB-13E9P3 is now available.