Switchtec PCIe switch series provides greater flexibility for cloud AI and ML architectures

Microchip Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MCHP) today announced that its Switchtec™ PAX Fabric Interconnect Gen 4 PCIe switch family is now in production to support cloud, data center and hyperscale computing to advance artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The family supports complex fabric topologies with greater scalability, lower latency and higher performance than traditional Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) switches.

Microchip’s Switchtec PAX PCIe family of switches provides a turnkey networking solution and reduces time to market for systems that require multi-host shared access to Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), non-volatile memory (NVMe), solid-state drives (SSDs), graphics processing units (GPUs) and other PCIe endpoints.

Switchtec PAX devices are the industry's lowest power Gen 4 PCIe switches, significantly reducing total system power consumption. The Switchtec PAX Series switches are available in the following models: 100-channel, 84-channel, 68-channel, 52-channel, 36-channel and 28-channel. Other features of the PAX Series switches include:

Advanced Error Control

Comprehensive diagnostic and debugging capabilities

Extensive I/O interfaces

Integrated MIPS processor

 Secure Boot (to prevent unauthorized firmware execution via public key cryptography)

The series can be used in GPU workstations, composable general-purpose GPU (GP-GPU) structures, scalable multi-host systems, JBOF with SR-IOV support, disaggregated systems and rack-mount architectures.