Why there are two or more PCIe Hard IPs in some FPGAs

fpgapcievirtex-series-fpga

I was looking for FPGA with PCIe Hard IPs. And I found some FPGAs with more than one Hard IPs. what is the advantage of having more than one Hard IPs in a single FPGA?

Best Answer

You need several HardIPs for:

  • PCIe bridges
  • PCIe Switches
  • custom designs that use PCIe as a board-to-board communication
  • ...

Common cores support up to 8 lanes and Gen2. More lanes are possible but need a Soft-IPCore. Also Gen3 is mostly provided as a Soft-IPCore.