PCI Express (PCIe) technology is now emerging as the interconnect standard for both chip-to-chip and backplane-interconnect designs, with broad applicability in PCs, servers, communications, storage, and embedded systems. Unlike several other potential interconnect solutions, it is based on the ubiquitous PCI bus specification and allows for extensive reuse of existing PCI software. PCIe is distinct from the 32-bit PCI and 64-bit PCI and PCI-X shared parallel buses (collectively PCI/X) by providing a high performance serial, packet-based, scalable architecture designed to overcome the limitations of PCI/X, dramatically improve time to market, and deliver new standardized features. PCIe switches provide standardized solutions utilizing existing code yet allow advanced system designs to be developed.