
PM8379
CTS 20x4G
Advance
PMC-2031144
Issue 2
PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL TO PMC
-
SIERRA, INC., 
AND FOR ITS CUSTOMERS’ INTERNAL USE
 Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2004. 
All rights reserved. 
20-Port 4.25 Gbit/s FC-AL Cut-Through Switch
The CTS 20x4G is designed to interface 
directly to Fibre Channel disk drives in a 
storage array.  It can interface directly to 
optics or to cables at the ingress/egress 
point of an enclosure and is able to 
determine if an incoming frame is 
destined for a drive within that enclosure. 
After determining which port is 
associated with the frames recipient, a 
cut through operation to that port is 
performed thereby significantly reducing 
system latency and improving perfor-
mance. 
The CTS 20x4G provides unique disk 
isolation features that significantly 
increase total system availability, 
reliability, and serviceability.
FEATURES
GENERAL
 20 independent rate selectable 1.0625, 
2.125 or 4.25 Gbit/s physical 
interfaces.
 Register and software compatible to 
the PM8368 PBC 18x2G, PM8369 
PBC 18x4G, PM8372 PBC 4x2G and 
PM8377 PBC 4x4G.
 Compliant to FC jitter specifications on 
a per-port basis.
 Supports single-ended or differential 
106.25 MHz reference clock.
 Per port monitoring and diagnostics:
 LPSM Monitoring on each port.
 Disk isolation and per port serial 
loopback.
 Configurable Digital Loss of Link: 
analog LOS Detect, 8B/10B 
disparity errors/error rate, CRC 
errors/error rate, word 
synchronization error/error rate, and 
compliant frequency of comma 
patterns detected (configurable 
thresholds for each with 
corresponding pin interrupts).
 Built-in self test capability with FC 
Frame Generator/Comparator.
 Supports a 106.25 MHz, 40-bit (20 
receive + 20 transmit) DDR parallel 
interface that acts as a 21st port. This 
flexible interface enables external 
functions such as enclosure 
management or other user-proprietary 
functions to be implemented using a 
low cost FPGA.
CUT-THROUGH SWITCHING
 Integrated cut-through switching and 
arbitration management enables up to 
200% improvement in EDR and IOPS.
 Parallel arbitration supported with 
arbitration priority and access fairness 
preserved.
 Automatic or CPU controlled 
initialization of AL_PA table.
 Supports dynamic half duplex, half/full 
duplex operation, LPSM transfer state, 
multicast/broadcast (OPNy).
BLOCK DIAGRAM
T
RX FIFO
RX FIFO
RX FIFO
RX FIFO
CTS Logic
JTAG
CONTROL
CDRU
TX FIFO
RDIN[0]
RDIP[0]
RDIN[1]
RDIP[1]
RDIN[19]
RDIP[19]
TDON[0]
TDOP[0]
CPU
T
T
T
T
T
C
F
R
R
R
E
D
M
M
T
R
D
I
D
D
R
P
T
M
B
O
TX FIFO
RXCLK
RXD[19:0]
R
Frame Generator
Frame Comparator
Arb
Mgmt
AL_PA
Table
Cut Thru
Mgmt
TX FIFO
TDON[1]
TDOP[1]
TDON[19]
TDOP[19]
TXD[19:0]
TXCLK