CN106021151A - Signal enhancing board as well as signal enhancing method and system - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention provides a signal enhancing board as well as a signal enhancing system and method. The signal enhancing board comprises a PCIE signal interface unit, a signal pre-processing unit, a signal enhancing processing unit, a conversion and transmission unit and an SAS signal interface unit, wherein the PCIE signal interface unit is used for receiving a PCIE signal from an external mainboard; the signal pre-processing unit is used for removing a shake in the PCIE signal received by the PCIE signal interface unit, resetting output parameters through a dial switch and transmitting the processed PCIE signal to the signal enhancing processing unit; the signal enhancing processing unit is used for enhancing the amplitudes of a rising edge and a falling edge of the PCIE signal, reducing the oscillation amplitude of the PCIE signal and transmitting the processed PCIE signal to the conversion and transmission unit; the conversion and transmission unit are used for converting the received PCIE signal into an SAS signal and transmitting the SAS signal to the SAS signal interface unit; and the SAS signal interface unit is used for sending the received SAS signal to an external hard disk backboard. According to the signal enhancing board as well as the signal enhancing system and method, the PCIE signal between the mainboard and the hard disk backboard can be enhanced.

Description

A signal enhancement board, signal enhancement method and system

technical field

The invention relates to the technical field of computers, in particular to a signal enhancement board, a signal enhancement method and a system.

Background technique

In the server, in order to solve the problem of space utilization, the hard disk interface is usually placed on the backplane, and the main board and the backplane are connected by cables.

In practical applications, too long PCIE traces and cables on the hard disk backplane may cause PCIE signal weakening and signal distortion.

Contents of the invention

Embodiments of the present invention provide a signal enhancement board, a signal enhancement method, and a system capable of performing enhancement processing on PCIE signals.

A signal booster board, comprising:

The PCIE signal interface unit is used to receive PCIE signals from the external motherboard;

Signal pre-processing unit, used to remove the jitter in the PCIE signal received by the PCIE signal interface unit, reset the output parameters by the dial switch, and transmit the processed PCIE signal to the signal enhancement processing unit;

The signal enhancement processing unit is used to enhance the amplitude of the rising edge and the falling edge of the PCIE signal and reduce the swing of the PCIE signal, and transmit the processed PCIE signal to the conversion transmission unit;

The conversion transmission unit is used to convert the received PCIE signal into a SAS signal, and then transmit it to the SAS signal interface unit;

The SAS signal interface unit is used to send the received SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane.

The signal enhancement processing unit is further used to enhance the amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectral component after performing the reduction of the PCIE signal swing and before transmitting the processed PCIE signal to the conversion transmission unit .

The signal preprocessing unit transmits the processed PCIE signal in a PCIE signal differential transmission manner.

Described PCIE signal interface unit comprises:

The first PCIE interface subunit is used to receive the PCIE RX signal;

The second PCIE interface subunit is used to receive the PCIE TX signal.

The SAS signal interface unit includes:

a first SAS interface subunit, configured to receive a SAS RX signal;

The second SAS interface subunit is used to receive the SAS TX signal.

The signal preprocessing unit determines the output parameters of the PCIE signal that meet the set requirements by measuring the integrity of the PCIE signal, adjusting the dial switch, and checking the signal quality of the eye diagram.

A signal enhancement system comprising:

Motherboard, hard disk backplane, and any one of the above-mentioned signal enhancement boards; among them,

The main board outputs a PCIE signal to the PCIE signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board through its own PCIE signal interface;

The hard disk backplane is connected to the SAS signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board through a cable.

Further include: PCIE hard disk;

The at least one PCIE hard disk is connected to the hard disk backplane through an 8639 interface.

A method of signal enhancement, comprising:

Receive PCIE signal from external motherboard;

remove the jitter in the PCIE signal;

Reset the output parameters through the DIP switch;

Enhance the amplitude of the rising and falling edges of the PCIE signal and reduce the swing of the PCIE signal;

Convert the current PCIE signal to SAS signal;

Send the SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane.

The reset of the output parameters through the DIP switch includes:

Measure PCIE signal integrity;

Adjust the DIP switch, check the signal quality of the eye diagram, and determine the output parameters of the PCIE signal that meet the set requirements.

The signal enhancement board, signal enhancement system and signal enhancement method provided by the embodiments of the present invention can perform a series of processing on PCIE signal enhancement, including: removing the jitter in the PCIE signal, resetting the output parameters through the dial switch, and enhancing the PCIE signal The magnitude of the rising and falling edges and reduce the PCIE signal swing. Therefore, it is ensured that before the PCIE signal is transmitted to the hard disk backplane through the SAS signal interface, the PCIE signal is enhanced, so the problems of PCIE signal weakening and signal distortion can be reduced.

Description of drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the following will briefly introduce the drawings that need to be used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art. Obviously, the accompanying drawings in the following description are For some embodiments of the present invention, those skilled in the art can also obtain other drawings based on these drawings without creative work.

Fig. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of a signal enhancement board in an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a signal enhancement board in another embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a signal enhancement system in an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 4 is a flowchart of a signal enhancement method in an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 5 is a flowchart of a signal enhancement method in another embodiment of the present invention.

detailed description

In order to make the purpose, technical solutions and advantages of the embodiments of the present invention clearer, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be clearly and completely described below in conjunction with the drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. Obviously, the described embodiments It is a part of the embodiments of the present invention, but not all of them. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by those of ordinary skill in the art without creative work belong to the protection of the present invention. scope.

An embodiment of the present invention proposes a signal enhancement board, see FIG. 1, including:

PCIE signal interface unit 101, for receiving PCIE signal from external motherboard;

The signal preprocessing unit 102 is used to remove the jitter in the PCIE signal received by the PCIE signal interface unit 101, resets the output parameters by the dial switch, and transmits the processed PCIE signal to the signal enhancement processing unit 103;

The signal enhancement processing unit 103 is used to enhance the amplitude of the rising edge and the falling edge of the PCIE signal and reduce the PCIE signal swing, and transmit the processed PCIE signal to the conversion transmission unit 104;

The conversion transmission unit 104 is used to convert the received PCIE signal into a SAS signal, and then transmit it to the SAS signal interface unit 105;

The SAS signal interface unit 105 is configured to send the received SAS signal to an external hard disk backplane.

The signal enhancement board provided by the embodiment of the present invention can cooperate with each functional unit to perform a series of processing on PCIE signal enhancement, including: removing the jitter in the PCIE signal, resetting the output parameters through the dial switch, and enhancing the rising edge of the PCIE signal and the magnitude of the falling edge and reduce the PCIE signal swing. Therefore, it is ensured that before the PCIE signal is transmitted to the hard disk backplane through the SAS signal interface, the PCIE signal is enhanced, so the problems of PCIE signal weakening and signal distortion can be reduced.

In one embodiment of the present invention, in order to further improve the effect of signal enhancement, the signal enhancement processing unit 103 is further configured to transmit the processed PCIE signal to the conversion after performing the reduction of the PCIE signal swing. Before the transmission unit 104, the amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectrum component is enhanced.

In the embodiment of the present invention, the amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectral component is enhanced, and it can also be enhanced only for the required amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectral component according to the needs of the actual business, so that It is more convenient for signal transmission. The signal transmission exhibits the characteristics of a low-pass filter. During the transmission process, the high-frequency components of the signal attenuate greatly, and the low-frequency components attenuate little.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the signal pre-processing unit 102 transmits the processed PCIE signal in a PCIE signal differential transmission manner. The signal-to-noise ratio can be greatly improved by using the PCIE signal differential transmission mode to transmit the processed PCIE signal.

In one embodiment of the present invention, referring to Fig. 2, the PCIE signal interface unit 101 includes:

The first PCIE interface subunit 201 is configured to receive a PCIE RX signal;

The second PCIE interface subunit 202 is configured to receive a PCIE TX signal.

The SAS signal interface unit 105 includes:

The first SAS interface subunit 203 is configured to receive a SAS RX signal;

The second SAS interface subunit 204 is configured to receive the SAS TX signal.

Through the structure shown in FIG. 2 above, the signal enhancement unit can process the PCIE RX signal and the PCIETX signal, and convert them into SAS RX signal and SAS TX signal correspondingly, which improves the practicability.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the implementation of the signal preprocessing unit 102 to determine the output parameters may include: the signal preprocessing unit 102 adjusts the dial switch by measuring the integrity of the PCIE signal, and checks the signal quality of the eye diagram, The output parameters of the PCIE signal meeting the set requirements are determined.

By determining the output parameters of the PCIE signal that meet the setting requirements through the signal preprocessing unit 102, the output parameters can be reset, the re-encoding of the signal can be completed, and the correction of the signal can be realized.

An embodiment of the present invention also proposes a signal enhancement system, see Figure 3, including:

Main board 301, hard disk backplane 302, and any signal enhancement board 303 proposed by the embodiment of the present invention; wherein,

The mainboard 301 outputs a PCIE signal to the PCIE signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board 303 through its own PCIE signal interface;

The hard disk backplane 302 is connected to the SAS signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board 303 through a cable.

It can be seen that using any signal enhancement board proposed in the embodiment of the present invention, and cooperating with the main board and the hard disk backplane, can ensure that the PCIE signal of the main board is transmitted to the hard disk backplane through the SAS signal after conversion, and at the same time enhance the signal, that is Ensure that the signal transmitted to the hard disk backplane is an enhanced signal. This signal enhancement system avoids problems such as signal distortion.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the system of signal enhancement may further include: PCIE hard disk;

The at least one PCIE hard disk is connected to the hard disk backplane through an 8639 interface.

In one embodiment of the present invention, in the signal enhancement system, the motherboard 301 may include: important electronic components such as processor, memory, and management chip; the signal enhancement board 303 is used for signal enhancement and correction during signal transmission; hard disk The backplane 302 is used for connecting hard disks.

An embodiment of the present invention also proposes a method for signal enhancement, which is applied to the signal enhancement board arranged between the main board and the hard disk backplane, see Figure 4, including:

401: Receive PCIE signal from external motherboard;

402: Remove jitter in the PCIE signal;

403: Reset the output parameters through the DIP switch;

404: Enhancing the amplitude of the rising and falling edges of the PCIE signal and reducing the swing of the PCIE signal;

405: convert the current PCIE signal into a SAS signal;

406: Send the SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane.

The signal enhancement method of the embodiment of the present invention shown in Fig. 4 above can perform a series of processing on PCIE signal enhancement, including: removing the jitter in the PCIE signal, resetting the output parameters through the dial switch, enhancing the rising edge and The magnitude of the falling edge and reduces the PCIE signal swing. Therefore, it is ensured that before the PCIE signal is transmitted to the hard disk backplane through the SAS signal interface, the PCIE signal is enhanced, so the problems of PCIE signal weakening and signal distortion can be reduced.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the specific implementation of resetting the output parameters through the DIP switch in the above step 403 may include: measuring the PCIE signal integrity; adjusting the DIP switch, and checking the signal quality of the eye diagram, and determining that the setting is satisfied The output parameter of the requested PCIE signal.

An embodiment of the present invention proposes another method for signal enhancement, which is applied to the signal enhancement board arranged between the main board and the hard disk backplane, see Figure 5, including:

501: receiving a PCIE signal from an external motherboard;

502: Remove the random and deterministic jitter in the PCIE signal, and eliminate the interference between symbols.

503: Reset the output parameters through the DIP switch;

The specific implementation of this step 503 may include: by measuring the signal integrity, adjusting the dial switch, using an oscilloscope to check the signal quality of the eye diagram, and determining the best signal parameters as the output parameters of the PCIE signal, thereby enhancing and correcting the PCIE signal.

For the above steps 502 and 503, it is a process of correcting and re-encoding the PCIE signal.

Since the length of the PCIE GEN3 trace is limited to less than 15 inches, in practical applications, due to the long path, large trace interference or too long cable, the SI eye diagram will be wrong, and even the system cannot find the device, and the device is running. Errors and loss will occur. There is loss in the signal transmission process, which will reduce the signal quality. For high-frequency signals that switch frequently, the attenuation is more severe than for continuous low-frequency signals. Long continuous invariant codes reach higher levels and take more time to reach the threshold level when transitioning, causing signal jitter.

Therefore, after the PCIE signal output from the motherboard reaches the PCIE signal enhancement board, first remove the random and deterministic jitter in the signal through the above steps 502 and 503, eliminate the interference between symbols, and reset the output jitter parameters through the DIP switch , so that the signal can be corrected to achieve re-encoding.

504: Enhance the high-frequency component of the signal, that is, enhance the amplitude of the rising edge and falling edge of the PCIE signal;

Here, the high-frequency component of the signal is enhanced to compensate for the excessive attenuation of the high-frequency component during transmission, that is, the amplitude of the rising and falling edges of the signal is enhanced to better compensate for the loss of the signal during transmission and improve signal quality.

505: reduce the PCIE signal swing;

This step speeds up the enhancement process by reducing the signal swing without increasing crosstalk, EMI, or power consumption.

506: Enhance the amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectrum component.

This step is a measure to pre-enhance the amplitude of some spectral components in order to facilitate signal transmission. The signal transmission exhibits the characteristics of a low-pass filter. During the transmission process, the high-frequency components of the signal attenuate greatly, and the low-frequency components attenuate little.

507: Transmit the processed PCIE signal in a PCIE signal differential transmission manner.

This step can greatly improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

508: Convert the current PCIE signal into a SAS signal;

509: Send the SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane.

Various embodiments of the present invention have at least the following beneficial effects:

1. It can carry out a series of processing on PCIE signal enhancement, including: remove the jitter in PCIE signal, reset the output parameters through the DIP switch, enhance the amplitude of rising and falling edges of PCIE signal and reduce the swing of PCIE signal. Therefore, it is ensured that before the PCIE signal is transmitted to the hard disk backplane through the SAS signal interface, the PCIE signal is enhanced, so the problems of PCIE signal weakening and signal distortion can be reduced.

2. In the embodiment of the present invention, after the PCIE signal output from the motherboard reaches the PCIE signal enhancement board, the random and deterministic jitter in the signal can be removed, the interference between symbols can be eliminated, and the output jitter parameters can be reset through the dial switch. In this way, the signal can be corrected to achieve re-encoding.

3. In the embodiment of the present invention, the high-frequency component of the signal is enhanced to compensate for the excessive attenuation of the high-frequency component during the transmission process, that is, the amplitude of the rising and falling edges of the signal is enhanced to better compensate for the signal loss during transmission. loss, improving signal quality.

4. In the embodiment of the present invention, in order to facilitate signal transmission, the amplitude of some spectral components is pre-enhanced. The signal transmission exhibits the characteristics of a low-pass filter. During the transmission process, the high-frequency components of the signal attenuate greatly, and the low-frequency components attenuate little.

It should be noted that in this article, relational terms such as first and second are only used to distinguish one entity or operation from another entity or operation, and do not necessarily require or imply that there is a relationship between these entities or operations. There is no such actual relationship or sequence. Furthermore, the term "comprises", "comprises" or any other variation thereof is intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion such that a process, method, article or apparatus comprising a set of elements includes not only those elements, but also includes elements not expressly listed. other elements of or also include elements inherent in such a process, method, article, or device. Without further limitations, an element defined by the phrase "comprising a ..." does not exclude the presence of additional same elements in the process, method, article or apparatus comprising said element.

Those of ordinary skill in the art can understand that all or part of the steps to realize the above method embodiments can be completed by program instructions related hardware, and the aforementioned programs can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium. When the program is executed, the It includes the steps of the above method embodiments; and the aforementioned storage medium includes: ROM, RAM, magnetic disk or optical disk and other various media that can store program codes.

Finally, it should be noted that the above descriptions are only preferred embodiments of the present invention, and are only used to illustrate the technical solution of the present invention, and are not used to limit the protection scope of the present invention. Any modification, equivalent replacement, improvement, etc. made within the spirit and principles of the present invention are included in the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims (10)

1. A signal enhancement board, characterized in that, comprising: The PCIE signal interface unit is used to receive PCIE signals from the external motherboard; Signal pre-processing unit, used to remove the jitter in the PCIE signal received by the PCIE signal interface unit, reset the output parameters by the dial switch, and transmit the processed PCIE signal to the signal enhancement processing unit; The signal enhancement processing unit is used to enhance the amplitude of the rising edge and the falling edge of the PCIE signal and reduce the swing of the PCIE signal, and transmit the processed PCIE signal to the conversion transmission unit; The conversion transmission unit is used to convert the received PCIE signal into a SAS signal, and then transmit it to the SAS signal interface unit; The SAS signal interface unit is used to send the received SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane. 2. The signal enhancement board according to claim 1, wherein the signal enhancement processing unit is further configured to transmit the processed PCIE signal to the signal after performing the reduction of the PCIE signal swing. Before the enhancement processing unit, the amplitude of the PCIE signal of the predetermined spectrum component is enhanced. 3. The signal enhancement board according to claim 1, wherein the signal preprocessing unit transmits the processed PCIE signal using a PCIE signal differential transmission mode. 4. signal enhancement board according to claim 1, is characterized in that, described PCIE signal interface unit comprises: The first PCIE interface subunit is used to receive the PCIE RX signal; The second PCIE interface subunit is used to receive the PCIE TX signal. 5. The signal enhancement board according to claim 4, wherein the SAS signal interface unit comprises: a first SAS interface subunit, configured to receive a SAS RX signal; The second SAS interface subunit is used to receive the SAS TX signal. 6. The signal enhancement board according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the signal preprocessing unit adjusts the DIP switch by measuring the integrity of the PCIE signal, checks the signal quality of the eye diagram, and determines that the Set the output parameters of the required PCIE signal. 7. A signal enhancement system, comprising: Motherboard, hard disk backplane, and signal enhancement board according to any one of claims 1 to 6; wherein, The main board outputs a PCIE signal to the PCIE signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board through its own PCIE signal interface; The hard disk backplane is connected to the SAS signal interface unit of the signal enhancement board through a cable. 8. The signal enhancement system according to claim 7, further comprising: a PCIE hard disk; The at least one PCIE hard disk is connected to the hard disk backplane through an 8639 interface. 9. A method for signal enhancement, comprising: Receive PCIE signal from external motherboard; remove the jitter in the PCIE signal; Reset the output parameters through the DIP switch; Enhance the amplitude of the rising and falling edges of the PCIE signal and reduce the swing of the PCIE signal; Convert the current PCIE signal to SAS signal; Send the SAS signal to the external hard disk backplane. 10. The method according to claim 9, wherein said resetting the output parameters through the dial switch comprises: Measure PCIE signal integrity; Adjust the DIP switch, check the signal quality of the eye diagram, and determine the output parameters of the PCIE signal that meet the set requirements.