Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Triossi, A
• Barrientos, D
• Bellato, M
• Bortolato, D
• Isocrate, R
• Rampazzo, G
• Ventura, S

Titel

A PCI Express optical link based on low-cost transceivers qualified for radiation hardness

Ist Teil von

• Journal of instrumentation, 2013-02, Vol.7 (2), p.1-9

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this paper we want to demonstrate that an optical physical medium is compatible with the second generation of PCI Express. The benefit introduced by the optical decoupling of a PCI Express endpoint is twofold: it allows for a geographical detachment of the device and it remains compliant with the usual PCI accesses to the legacy I/O and memory spaces. We propose two boards that can bridge the PCI Express protocol over optical fiber. The first is a simple optical translator while the second is a more robust switch developed for connecting up to four devices to a single host. Such adapters are already working in the control and data acquisition system of a particle detector at CERN and hence they had been qualified for radiation hardness. The positive outcomes of the radiation tests of four types of off-the-shelf transceivers are finally reported.