World’s first small scale PCIe 5.0 switch

Kandou in Switzerland has launched a transport layer switch for PCI Express 5.0

Zetti is the world’s first small-scale PCIe 5.0 ready switch for IoT, medical, mobile computing, industrial PCs, and telecoms designs. The transport layer switch chip includes peer to peer transaction and Hot Plug support, and is fully backwards compatible.

• Kandou raises $72m

The 7-port (8-lane) Zetti packet switch supports one upstream port (up to four lanes) and up to six downstream ports (four or six lanes total), each simultaneously functioning as an independent PCIe port with different speeds and capabilities. This provides maximum system design flexibility – allowing ultra-mobile processors with limited PCIe IO resources to support more PCIe endpoint devices.

Peer to Peer Transaction offloads CPU memory access workload to reduce latency and power consumption while enhancing performance, while Hot Plug Support – a feature usually only included with large scale switches – comes as standard.

The 5.5mm x 10mm chip includes an on-chip diagnostics tool called Besso for rapid debugging on the bench or in the field to accelerate time to market. Zetti also has support for secure boot platform to prevent cyber attackers from altering its sideband boot configuration stored in external secure SPI flashThe chip measures

“System designers working with lower-cost CPUs in the peripherals and IoT market, with limited die space for PCIe lanes, are currently restricted to 3.0 speeds,” said Thomas Boudrot, VP of Sales & Business Development at Kandou. “If one or more endpoint needs to run at full PCIe 5.0 speed, designers are forced to add more lanes at a higher cost or employ inefficient workarounds such as under-utilizing bandwidth. This is a waste of time, money, and technology. Zetti offers a solution.”