CE3-GIG

The CE3-GIG has been developed to satisfy the demand for additional SATA and USB ports in a CompactPCI® environment. Three front panel eSATA/USB combo connectors are provided, for attachment of either USB 2.0 or eSATA external devices. A fourth F/P connector is available for USB devices only.
The front panel combo connectors are ‘Power over eSATA’ compliant, with dedicated +12V power and ground pins.
In addition, a docking connector is provided for mounting an on-board 2.5-inch SATA hard disk (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD).

A CompactPCI® Classic backplane is based on the PCI Local Bus Specification. Current components however require a PCI Express® interface. Therefore the CE3-GIG is provided with a PCI to PCIe bridge. The PLX PEX 8112 is a proven solution for a 32-bit 33/66MHz PCI system and offers a single 2.5Gbps PCIe lane.
The CE3-GIG is equipped with two individual SATA controllers (JMicron JMB362), which results in the need for two PCIe lanes. Hence a PCI Express® packet switch is in use in the middle between the PCI to PE bridge and the SATA controllers. The PCIe packet switch (Pericom PI7C9X442SLB) incorporates in addition the quad port USB 2.0 controller bridge.
Each JMicron JMB362 SATA controller allows for optional RAID level 0/1/10 operation across its two channels. The eSATA/USB front panel combo connectors 1 and 2 are recommended for employment if this feature is required. The other JMB362 SATA channels are distributed on-board (docking connector) and F/P, which seems to be an inconvenient configuration in most cases with respect to RAID.
Some CompactPCI® systems are provided with a +5V single rail power supply. Consequently, the CE3-GIG requires only +5V power. As an option however, the CE3-GIG can be equipped with DC-DC converters from +5V to +3.3V/8A and/or +12V/0.8A, in order to supply other CompactPCI® cards which may have need for either voltage.