January 20, 2025 /SemiMedia/ — Microchip Technology recently announced sample availability of the new PCI100x family of Switchtec™ PCIe Gen 4.0 switches, addressing the critical need for efficient management of high-bandwidth data transfer and seamless communication in automotive, industrial, and data center applications. These switches provide scalability, reliability, and low-latency connectivity, essential for handling the demanding workloads of modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems, including variants supporting packet switching and multi-host applications.

The PCI1005 is a packet switch which expands a single host PCIe port to as many as six endpoints. The PCI1003 device enables multi-host connectivity through Non-Transparent Bridging (NTB) and is fully configurable to support from 4–8 ports. All devices are compliant with the PCI-SIG Gen5 specification and operate up to 16GT/s. High-speed DMA is supported on all variants. Advanced Switchtec technology features include Automatic Error Reporting (AER), Downstream Port Containment (DPC) and Completion Timeout Synthesis (CTS). The PCI100x devices are available in wide temperature ranges including commercial (0°C to +70°C), industrial (−40°C to +85°C) and Automotive Grade 2 (−40°C to +105°C) ambient ratings.

“The PCI100x family is a cost-effective solution that does not compromise on high performance and high reliability. It enables designers to now take advantage of PCIe switch capabilities for mass market automotive and embedded computing applications,” said Charles Forni, vice president of Microchip’s USB and networking business unit. “In addition to these connectivity solutions, customers can get many critical components from Microchip including timing, power management and sensors.”

Microchip’s broad portfolio of PCIe switches provides high-density, low-power and reliable solutions for applications like data centers, GPU servers, SSD enclosures and embedded computing. The portfolio also includes Flashtec® NVMe® controllers and NVRAM drives, Ethernet PHYs and switches, timing solutions and Flash-based FPGAs and SoCs, supporting markets such as storage, automotive, industrial and communications.

The PCI1005 and PCI1003 switches are now available in limited sample quantities. Pricing for the PCI1005 commercial variant is $43 each in 1,000-unit quantities (note pricing is subject to change). For more information, please visit https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/interface-and-connectivity/pcie-switches.