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Speaking of Geerling testing Pi 5 things, is it just me or is it super weird that the uPCity PCIe breakout board hasn't been put on sale yet? I think it's almos

Speaking of Geerling testing Pi 5 things, is it just me or is it super weird that the uPCity PCIe breakout board hasn't been put on sale yet? I think it's almost half a year since he got it working in a pre-release state.

tuetuopay 3y ago
I recently went on the lookout for this board and it is still unavailable. All I could find were M.2 adapters. I guess the market for full-size PCIe is tiny compared to the M.2 one. Anyways, I ended up making my own and it works great. No fuss, no wait, no complications.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Ah you mean going the Pi Port -> M.2 hat -> M.2 to PCIe riser route? I suppose that should work. Any bandwidth issues?
  - tuetuopay 3y ago
    No, I literally made my own hand-soldered Pi Port -> PCIe adapter. That's to plug a 2x25Gbps programmable NIC, so no bandwidth needed because the NIC does all the work. All I needed was something to power up the nic :D As for bandwidth, well, it's one lane of PCIe gen 2. This won't win any races but can be useful to access exotic hardware not available in usb or if you don't care about bandwidth. (e.g. HBA with many drives for mass storage without speed requirement).
    - stu2010 3y ago
      How much power is the Pi port capable of delivering, or are you sending additional power to the PCIe adapter from somewhere else? What SmartNIC are you using? Most SmartNICs that I'm aware of suck a decent amount of power, many more require significant external airflow. Are you using the Mikrotik active cooled one? https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie
      - tuetuopay 3y ago
        The Pi port can deliver 5 or 10W max at 5V IIRC. So I'm not using it :D The 12V comes from an external power supply through a barrel jack, from which I also derive the 3.3V rail. The Pi provides no power whatsoever. I should publish the design files somewhere. As for the NIC, it's a Netronome Agilio-CX which is fully programmable using eBPF and such.
deleted 3y ago
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geerlingguy 3y ago
I keep pushing Pineberry Pi to release that—apparently they're still working on it—and 52Pi pre-announced something too... But so far there's no straight PCIe expansion board available to purchase yet. It is a slimmer market than 'NVMe on top' or other more standard use cases, but it's one I think could expand as people do weird things with the Pi 5.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Oh cool I haven't heard of that one, I see you have it listed: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats/52pi-pcie-x1-slot-hat.html https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats/52pi-pcie-x1-slot-hat.ht... Looks way more compact and well thought out in terms of mounting so definitely seems like the better option once it's released.

tuetuopay 3y ago

I recently went on the lookout for this board and it is still unavailable. All I could find were M.2 adapters. I guess the market for full-size PCIe is tiny compared to the M.2 one. Anyways, I ended up making my own and it works great. No fuss, no wait, no complications.

moffkalast 3y ago
Ah you mean going the Pi Port -> M.2 hat -> M.2 to PCIe riser route? I suppose that should work. Any bandwidth issues?
- tuetuopay 3y ago
  No, I literally made my own hand-soldered Pi Port -> PCIe adapter. That's to plug a 2x25Gbps programmable NIC, so no bandwidth needed because the NIC does all the work. All I needed was something to power up the nic :D As for bandwidth, well, it's one lane of PCIe gen 2. This won't win any races but can be useful to access exotic hardware not available in usb or if you don't care about bandwidth. (e.g. HBA with many drives for mass storage without speed requirement).
  - stu2010 3y ago
    How much power is the Pi port capable of delivering, or are you sending additional power to the PCIe adapter from somewhere else? What SmartNIC are you using? Most SmartNICs that I'm aware of suck a decent amount of power, many more require significant external airflow. Are you using the Mikrotik active cooled one? https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie
    - tuetuopay 3y ago
      The Pi port can deliver 5 or 10W max at 5V IIRC. So I'm not using it :D The 12V comes from an external power supply through a barrel jack, from which I also derive the 3.3V rail. The Pi provides no power whatsoever. I should publish the design files somewhere. As for the NIC, it's a Netronome Agilio-CX which is fully programmable using eBPF and such.

deleted 3y ago

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geerlingguy 3y ago

I keep pushing Pineberry Pi to release that—apparently they're still working on it—and 52Pi pre-announced something too... But so far there's no straight PCIe expansion board available to purchase yet. It is a slimmer market than 'NVMe on top' or other more standard use cases, but it's one I think could expand as people do weird things with the Pi 5.

moffkalast 3y ago
Oh cool I haven't heard of that one, I see you have it listed: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats/52pi-pcie-x1-slot-hat.html https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats/52pi-pcie-x1-slot-hat.ht... Looks way more compact and well thought out in terms of mounting so definitely seems like the better option once it's released.