PEX8796-AB80BIG [Broadcom]

Key Features

1. 96-lane, 24-port PCIe Gen3 switching
PEX 8796 provides 96 PCIe Gen3 lanes and up to 24 ports, making it suitable for large PCIe fan-out and aggregation designs. It can connect multiple endpoints such as SSDs, GPUs, FPGAs, NICs, and accelerator cards.

2. 8.0 GT/s PCIe Gen3 performance
The device integrates 8.0 GT/s SerDes and supports PCIe Gen3 data rates, while maintaining backward compatibility with earlier PCIe generations. This allows system designers to use it in mixed PCIe Gen1, Gen2, and Gen3 environments.

3. Multi-host architecture
PEX 8796 can operate in legacy single-host mode or multi-host mode. In multi-host mode, it can support up to four upstream host ports, allowing one switch device to create multiple isolated virtual PCIe switch domains.

4. Failover and redundancy support
The device supports 1+1 and N+1 host failover architectures, making it useful for high-availability servers, redundant storage systems, clustered systems, and fault-tolerant industrial or communication platforms.

5. Non-blocking switch fabric
PEX 8796 uses a non-blocking internal switch architecture, helping maintain full line-rate traffic across ports for bandwidth-intensive applications such as servers, PCIe fabrics, and storage platforms.

6. Low packet latency
The architecture supports packet cut-through with a maximum latency of about 150ns for x16-to-x16 traffic. This is important for performance-sensitive systems such as GPU acceleration, high-speed storage, and real-time data movement.

7. Flexible port configuration
Its 24 ports can be configured in x4, x8, or x16 widths. Any port can be designated as the upstream port, and the upstream port can be changed dynamically, giving system designers flexibility in PCIe topology design.

8. Data integrity protection
PEX 8796 supports end-to-end CRC protection, Poison bit support, data-path parity, and internal RAM error-correction circuitry, helping improve reliability in enterprise and mission-critical systems.

9. Hot-plug and high-availability design support
The product brief highlights hot-plug capability, which helps users replace hardware modules while supporting high-availability system designs.

10. Enterprise-grade package and thermal profile
The device is supplied in a 1156-ball FCBGA 35mm × 35mm package, with typical power around 18.6W, making it suitable for dense, high-performance system boards