News & Events > Press Releases > 04/27/2010

One Stop Systems’ PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 2 Products Offer Greater Performance at Lower Cost

• 26 new Gen 2 products including 9 new cable adapters and 17 cable expansion products
• Gen 2 Products operate at twice the throughput of Gen 1 products at less cost

ESCONDIDO, Calif., April 27, 2010 – One Stop Systems, Inc. (OSS), a global provider of commercial computing systems and components and first-to-market with PCIe over cable products, continues to move out in front of the market with its new line of PCIe Gen 2 products, having twice the bandwidth of Gen 1 at even lower costs. PCIe over cable has witnessed wide acceptance as the computing community discovers its overwhelming advantages of flexibility, price, and performance. OSS has long been the dominant player in the PCIe over cable market, having co-authored the specifications and offering the largest array of cable expansion products available. PCI Express is the only bus that can effectively extend over cable without requiring software conversion and thus incurring increased overhead and latency. In other words, what happens on the end of the cable appears to the host system like it’s part of that system.

“One Stop Systems’ Gen 2 products continue to lead the industry in PCI Express over cable products,” said Steve Cooper, CEO. “Major OEMs are packaging our cable adapters with their products and some of the nation’s largest instrumentation providers are using and selling OSS PCIe cabled products. Gen 2 products are the natural progression of products for OSS to release. Operating at 5GHz per lane, these state-of-the-art products bring greater performance, less overhead, lower latencies, and now lower costs to an already commanding technology. With PCI Express being the bus structure that all PC’s are built on today, these products have great longevity with new applications being continually unveiled. OSS will continue to ride the leading edge of this technology and bring its latest developments to the market.”

9 New Host Adapters
OSS’ PCIe x4, x8, and x16 Gen 2 host and target cable adapters are re-driver-based boards that boost the signal without altering it. The host adapters install in the PCIe slot of the host system and accept a PCIe cable of the same lane count. The target cable adapters install in the OSS 2-slot backplane and bring the host bus to an I/O card installed in the second backplane slot. Host adapters can also cable to other PCIe devices. The x4 cable adapters (OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x4-H, OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x4-T) list for $175 per unit, the x8 cable adapters (OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x8-H, OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x8-T) list for $195 per unit, and the x16 cable adapters (OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x16-H, OSS-PCIe-HIB25-x16-T) list for $495 per unit.

The PCIe x4 Gen 2 switch-based cable adapter contains a non-transparent port and a DMA controller. The switch-based adapter is used for PC-to-PC communication when coupled with the appropriate driver. The OSS-PCIe-HIB35-x4 lists for $695 per unit.

The new XMC x8 cable adapter installs in the XMC site of a carrier board or CPU board. The XMC adapter is often used in VME and CPCIe systems for military and other embedded applications. The PCIe x8 Gen 2 XMC cable adapter (OSS-XMC-HIB25-x8) lists for $595 per unit. OEM quantities can be quoted on all adapters and all are available immediately.

PCIe x8 Gen 2 Expansion Board
The PCIe x8 Gen 2 expansion link board installs in the SHB slot, or system slot, of a PCIe backplane and extends the host bus to the backplane slots. By cabling from a host adapter in a Gen 2 system to an expansion link board in a Gen 2 backplane, designers can now add greater numbers of Gen 2 slots to their slot-limited systems. Systems can be daisy-chained to support even larger numbers of slots. The expansion link board (OSS-SHB-ELB-x4/x8-2.0) lists for $936 per unit and is available immediately. OEM quantities can be quoted.

Expansion Kits
OSS has assembled many of the cable adapters, cables, and backplanes into kits to make selecting the exact solution for any PCIe application easier. They have been priced lower than the combination of their components and are less expensive than their Gen 1 counterparts. OSS is introducing four Gen 2 expansion kits, three of which include host and target adapters, 2-slot backplane and 2 meter cable. The PCIe x4 kit (OSS-KIT-EXP-3500-2M) lists for $466, the x8 kit (OSS-KIT-EXP-8000-2M) lists for $711 and the x16 kit (OSS-KIT-EXP-9000-2M) lists for $1,498. All are available immediately.

The PCIe x8 Gen 2 expansion kit includes a PCIe x8 Gen 2 cable adapter, x8 Gen 2 expansion link board and a 2 meter x8 cable. The kit (OSS-KIT-EXP-1100-2M) lists for $1,298 and is available immediately.

1U 9-port Switch
The OSS 1U switch adds scalability and flexibility to any PCIe expansion project requiring a number of PCIe devices operating from a single Gen 2 host server. Either a x4 or x16 cable adapter can be installed in the host server and cabled to the switch. As many as eight expansion systems, RAID arrays, or other PCIe devices can be cabled from the switch using x4 cables. All of the devices appear to the server as part of that PC. The 1U switch (OSS-PCIe-1U-SW-x4-2.0) lists for $2,525 and is available immediately.

Gen 2 Backplanes
Expansion backplanes provide additional expansion slots to the host server and have cable connectors located on them. This saves the cost of an expansion board but limits the number of available slots. OSS is introducing two new ATX form factor Gen 2 expansion backplanes. The first backplane has four PCIe x4 slots (x16 physically) and three PCI-X slots and both PCIe x4 or x8 cable connectors. This backplane (OSS-PCIe-ATX-BP-2020) lists for $1,728. The second backplane (OSS-PCIE-ATX-BP-2023) has two PCIe x16 Gen 2 slots, one PCIe x8 Gen2 slot, two PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots, and one PCIe x16 cable connector and lists for $1,871. Both are available immediately.

SHB backplanes have a system host, or SHBe slot and can be used with a system host board as a single system or with and expansion link board installed in the SHBe slot and used as an expansion backplane to a host server. OSS is introducing a new Gen 2 SHB backplane having one SHBe slot, seventeen PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots and two PCIe x8 Gen 2 slots. The 20-slot SHB backplane (OSS-PCIe-BP-2022) lists for $1,981 and is available immediately.

Expansion Systems
OSS first introduced the 1U and 2U PCIe x16 Gen 2 expansion systems in late 2009. These powerful units provide full 80Gb/s bandwidth to each expansion slot making them ideal for supporting multiple GPU’s (graphics processing units) in a single system. This is especially attractive to high performance computing (HPC) and data center applications. The 1U expansion system with a PCIe x16 cable adapter, 2 meter cable, and two PCIe x16 slots (OSS-PCIe-1U-ENCL-EXP-2) lists today for $2,495. The 2U model with dual 850 watt power supplies, dual x16 cable adapters, two 2 meter cables, and eight PCIe x16 slots (OSS-PCIe-2U-ENCL-EXP-8-2) lists for $3,995. Both of these and other models are available immediately.

The new OSS 4U expansion systems make it extremely easy for anyone to add additional slots to their existing PC. The OSS-PCIe-4U-EXP-2023-x16 has a 4U rackmount enclosure and is cabled to the host server with a PCIe x16 cable and adapter card. It contains two PCIe x16 Gen 2 slots, one PCIe x8 Gen2 slot, and two PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots and lists for $3,830. The OSS-PCIe-4U-EXP-2022-x4-400 cables to a host system with either a PCIe x4 or x8 cable and adapter card and contains seventeen PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots and two PCIe x8 Gen 2 slots. The OSS-PCIe-4U-EXP-2022-x4-400 lists for $3,635 and the x8 version lists for $3,791.

About One Stop Systems
One Stop Systems (OSS) pioneered PCIe over cable products and has been first to market with many of the PCIe cable adapters, expansion kits, and expansions systems available today. With an extensive engineering resource experienced and trained in PCIe design, manufacture, and test, OSS also customizes our products to make them fit our customers’ precise requirements. Custom and semi-custom products have long been OSS’ core capability, with over 500 custom and semi-custom products designed for OEM customers who continue to purchase these products over time.

In addition, OSS designs and manufactures 1U and 3U servers with the latest technology motherboards and processors and NEBS-certified for telecom applications. All are optimized for PCIe cable expansion, making them ideal for use with PCIe expansion systems. Many of these are rackmount COTS computers for military and defense applications. OSS has a proven record of producing the highest quality products through superior engineering, ISO9001-2008 quality-driven production, and responsive pre- and post-sales. For more information, contact our sales department toll free at (877) 438-2724 and visit our web site at www.onestopsystems.com.

###