Support for PCI Express (PCIe)

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

PCIe is designed to connect peripheral devices to desktop, enterprise, mobile, communication, and embedded applications.

The PCIe interconnect is an industry-standard, high-performance, serial I/O bus.

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 hot-plug 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 hot-pluggable PCIe devices on x86 systems. Note that the following 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                          etherne/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie5                          pci-pci/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie6                          unknown      disconnected unconfigured unknown

The administrative model for hot-plugging PCIe peripherals is the same as for PCI peripherals, which 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 hot-plug support is provided on your system. In addition, carefully review the instructions for physically inserting or removing adapters on your system and the semantics of device autoconfiguration, if applicable.

For more information about PCIe technology, see http://www.pcisig.com.