Snowbush IP's PCI Express Switch is a low-latency, power-optimized solution, based on individually optimized switch-port controllers, with a very small silicon footprint. The Switch IP can be configured to support up to eight downstream ports communicating with the host through one upstream port. As an option, each downstream port can be integrated with an embedded endpoint controller allowing the port to communicate with PCI Express unaware applications. The Switch IP supports simultaneous peer-to-peer exchanges between downstream ports resulting in high bandwidth. This powerful feature enables multiple endpoints to communicate with each other with minimal latency without host intervention. Any unused downstream ports can be disabled at power-up resulting in power savings. Each port can support from one to four lanes at either PCI Express Gen1 or Gen2 speeds.

The Switch IP solution implements all mandatory PCI Express power management features and supports additional and optional power management features, such as ClkReq. These features make it the ideal choice for embedded applications, wherein the host is used for housekeeping, and external or embedded endpoints communicate with one another directly through the switch.