Develop PCI Express Drivers (WinDriver)

PCI Express is gradually gaining momentum in becoming a new industry standard for many chipset manufacturers and developers. The PCI standard is currently the most widely used PCI architecture. However, recent industry trends indicate chipset manufacturers will also be utilizing the more efficient PCI Express chipsets in future designs, alongside the existing PCI chipsets.

The original PCI standard is a parallel based technology, and as such data is transmitted in a single direction only. With PCI based configurations a bottleneck may arise when all the devices are sharing the same data path and available bandwidth. While PCI Express is a serial based technology; data is transmitted over the bus in two directions at once. Data from PCI Express enabled devices can be transmitted using a combination of two-way serial connections to optimize throughput and therefore eliminate any possible data impediment.

PCI Express is also a more sophisticated technology, in that data is transmitted over a series of links. A "link" is the connection between PCI Express devices and the bus, which can consist of several lanes that transmit and receive data independently of each other. PCI Express links can be comprised of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, or 32 serial lanes. This configuration provides engineers and designers increased flexibility in assigning as many lanes as needed to any particular device. As such, the configuration requires a more complex driver design.

In order to take full advantage of PCI Express' enhanced features, more robust drivers are required. WinDriver provides the necessary tools to fully utilize the superior capabilities of the PCI Express standards, while additionally supporting the standard PCI bus - including a rich set of APIs, code samples and the graphical DriverWizard for hardware debugging and driver code generation.

PCI Express also expands the existing PCI Configuration space from 256 bytes to 4Kb. WinDriver provides the needed support and a set of API’s for easy access to PCI Express specific features such as the virtual channel support and advanced error reporting mechanisms which exist in the extended configuration space.

The WinDriver toolkit is a powerful cross-platform driver development software which is available for all major operating systems such as Windows, Windows CE, Linux, Solaris and VxWorks. Designed to be hardware agnostic, Windriver is the software solution of choice for both PCI and PCI Express driver developers. Such flexibility provides developers with the ability to design drivers in various environments and configurations. Furthermore, WinDriver includes enhanced support features for top chipset developers such as Xilinx, Altera, Texas Instruments and many more.

• Comprehensive documentation and help files.
• Technical support, according to Jungo's technical support plan.
• No run-time fees or royalties

• Download your Free 30-Day Trial version of WinDriver for PCI Express and see for yourself how easy and seamless driver development can be.
• Have a product specialist contact you or email us directly at sales@jungo.com