C h a p t e r 1
PCIE FOR I/O AND
PERIPHERAL CONNECTIVITY
Eduardo Eslava
Sr. Hardware Electronics Engineer, DANA Corporation
PCIe is so prominent in embedded
and industrial systems because it
delivers a universal, high-bandwidth,
low-latency interconnect with broad
ecosystem support."
There are many reasons why PCIe
has become the de facto I/O fabric in
embedded systems.
Architecture Agnostic
Connectivity
For starters, designers value PCIe
because it is inherently architecture-
agnostic. Whether engineers build a
system on ARM, x86, RISC-V, FPGAs,
or GPUs, these platforms have all
adopted PCIe as their primary fabric.
This universality removes the need for
complex translation layers and avoids the
fragmentation that plagued earlier high-
speed interfaces.
Similarly, PCIe strengthens heterogeneous
compute architectures by offering a
unified connection model for CPUs, GPUs,
and accelerators. For example, designers
can use PCIe to combine ARM-based
compute modules with FPGA acceleration
solutions without changing the software
framework. Because of the shared PCIe
layer, devices appear consistently to the
host regardless of vendor or internal
architecture. As a result, embedded
platforms can adopt new compute classes
with minimal integration cost.
Meanwhile, many SoM platforms
expose limited I/O outside of the main
PCIe lanes, making the carrier board
responsible for all peripheral expansion.
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8 Experts Discuss PCIe for Emerging Embedded Systems
