User guide

User Guide • PC1-GROOVE • Core

i7 CompactPCI

CPU Board

Serial ATA Interface (SATA)

The PC1-GROOVE provides eight serial ATA (SATA) ports each capable of transferring 3Gbps

(300MByte/s). Four of the six ports integrated within the PCH are routed to the CompactPCI PlusIO

interface (J2/P2 connector). The remainder SATA channels of the PCH and two further ports coming

from an additional controller (JMicron JMB362) are fed to the high speed expansion connector J-HSE.

This connector allows the installation of local expansion boards like C40-SCFA to attach the popular

CompactFlash cards.

A LED named HD located in the front panel, signals disk activity status of the SATA devices.

Available for download from Intel's and JMicron's web sites are drivers for popular operating systems,

e.g. Windows® XP, Windows® Vista, Windows® 7 and Linux.

PCI Express Interface (PCIe)

On PC1-GROOVE four PCI Express lanes, originating from the Core

i7 processor, are building one

upstream link to a PCI Express switch. The output ports (downstream ports) of the PCIe switch are

connected to the CompactPCI PlusIO connector J2/P2 (four lanes) and to the local PCIe expansion

interface connector J-PCIE (four lanes).

Two small DIP switches (DSW1) located on the backside of the board are used to configure different

lane widths to each of both downstream interfaces. Possible settings are

• A single link x 4 lanes to J2/P2 and a single link x 4 lanes to J-PCIE

• Four links x 1 lane to J2/P2 and a single link x 4 lanes to J-PCIE

• Four links x 1 lane to J2/P2 and four links x 1 lane to J-PCIE

See section “Configuration Switches PCI Express Link Width (DSW1)” for details.

While the link speed on the upstream side of the switch is restricted to 2.5GT/s due to limitations of

the PCH QM57, the downstream ports may support also PCIe Gen 2 speed (5GT/s).