Specifications

Matrox Mura MPX Series – System Builder’s Guide 61
place capture cards in the system. By carefully calculating the required bandwidth and ensuring that
there are no data bottlenecks in the system, the integrator can guarantee the optimal functioning of
the Mura-MPX based display wall.
A word about system architectures
We’ve assumed up this point that systems used for Mura-MPX based display walls will be based on a
switched architecture (that is, the PCI Express connectors are connected to PCI Express switches that
form the backbone of the system architecture) for the purpose of providing multiple PCIe slots for
add-in cards. There are, however, system motherboards that provide a small number of slots that
don’t use a switch-based architecture, but rather use the QPI interface between CPU chipsets to
bridge
the gap between groups of PCIe slots (see diagram below). Systems based on this architecture don’t
perform as well as display wall platforms. The QPI interface itself has limited bandwidth that makes
it unsuitable for transferring large amounts data (as is the case for a display wall system). At best, the
system could be suitable for applications requiring very limited streaming of SD only inputs, or a
single graphics-type input at a resolution requiring less than the available QPI bandwidth (system
dependent).