Support for PCI Express (PCIe)

This feature has been modified in the Solaris Express 4/06 release.

This Solaris release provides support for the PCI Express (PCIe) interconnect for both SPARC and x86 based systems.

PCIe is designed to connect peripheral devices to the following applications:

• Desktop

• Enterprise

• Mobile

• Communication

• Embedded

The PCIe interconnect is an industry-standard, high-performance, serial I/O bus. For details on PCIe technology, go to http://www.pcisig.com.

The PCIe software provides the following features in this Solaris release:

• Support for extended PCIe configuration space

• Support for PCIe baseline error handling and MSI interrupts

• Modified IEEE-1275 properties for PCIe devices

• PCIe hotplug support (both native and ACPI-based) by enhancing the cfgadm_pci component of the cfgadm command

• ATTN Button usage-based PCIe peripheral autoconfiguration

The following cfgadm example output displays the hotpluggable PCIe devices on an x86 system. Note that this display might differ from platform to platform. Check your hardware platform guide for the correct cfgadm syntax.

# cfgadm pci
Ap_Id                          Type         Receptacle   Occupant     Condition
pcie1                          unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie2                          unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie3                          unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie4                          ethernet/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie5                          pci-pci/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie6                          unknown      disconnected unconfigured unknown

The administrative model for hotplugging PCIe peripherals is the same as for PCI peripherals, which also use the cfgadm command.

For more information, see the cfgadm_pci(1M) man page and System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems. Check your hardware platform guide to ensure that PCIe and PCIe hotplug support are provided on your system. In addition, carefully review the instructions for physically inserting or removing adapters on your system, and review the semantics of device auto-configuration, if applicable.