Supermicro AOC-SLG3-8E2P Octaport NVMe HBA

I recently discovered that Supermicro has a PCIe PLX switch HBA card that supports 8 downstream devices via OCuLink, and that it's been out for maybe a year now.

AOC-SLG3-8E2P | Add-on Cards | Accessories | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Does anybody have any experience with this beast? Apparently the only thing google pulls up is a user on a Mac Pro forum claiming their tower got fried when trying to use it.

MP All Models - Blade SSDs - NVMe & AHCI

With 8 ports, it beats out Amfeltec's newer hexa Squid, but you can't buy it normally (Supermicro seems to be not selling this openly).

 

More googling pulls up comparable intel product that is obtainable...

AXXP3SWX08080
8-Port PCIe Gen3 x8 Switch AIC AXXP3SWX08080 Product Specifications

Which is an PCIe x8 to 8 OCulink board, in a FHHL form factor. Though the sticking point is 4 of those OCulink ports are at 90 degrees, and I can't seem to find any right angle OCulink to U.2 cables, and nobody seems to have a female-female OCulink gender changer. My google-fu is weak apparently.

 

Supermicro has oculink to U.2 cable for 15 bucks, using molex power connection.

https://store.supermicro.com/supermicro-55cm-oculink-to-u-2-pcie-with-power-cable-cbl-sast-0956.html

 

See here for the Intel part:

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...ink-interface-supermicro-aoc-slg3-4e2p.21081/

 

Wonder whether SM will do a PCIe4 part for that now that those are (soon to be) available with H12 boards...

 

I'm going to install the quad-port version (AOC-SLG3-4E2P) into an SC747 chassis ( SC747TG-R1400B-SQ | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc. ). My research leads me to the understanding that this is going to require swapping my current backplane, which supplies the 8x hot-swap front-loading SATA/SAS drive bays (BPN-SAS-747TQ), with the BPN-SAS-747TQ-N4 backplane, which has 4x NVMe/SATA/SAS drive bays plus 4x SATA/SAS drive bays ( https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SAS3-747TQ-N4.pdf ).

Has anybody tried a solution like this or used this backplane or a similar one?

I'm also looking at solutions involving mobile racks, which, I understand, already come with backplanes that allow 4x NVMe connections per 1x 5.25" slot.. I've already got 1x DVD+-RW ODD installed and I have 2x 5.25" slots spare.

 

There has been some discussion in another thread regarding using IcyDock 5.25 bay quad NVMe docks, as they use a "legacy" SFF-8643 pinout that may not play well with some cards. There was an intel AOC octoport card that apparently was not happy, though that used a PMC Sierra PCIe switch, compared to the Supermicro AOC which might be using a PLX switch. Though the IcyDock reports have not tested one of the SuperMicro OCulink to SFF-8643 cables with the OCulink end marked with a green band (which Supermicro takes pains to point out for use with their backplanes...)

 

I would like to now the max. Performance of these cards. For example with 8x optane 900p drive 2500:2000 read:write / drive performance. I think PCI-e 3.0 bus bandwidth too thin to get all available bandwidth of drives.

 

I got one of these via ebay (they've started showing up there recently), but I'm unable to boot at all with it plugged into the x16 slot in a test system (Fujitsu Primergy TX100 S3), which only has PCIe 2.0 slots. Just get a single beep every 2 seconds with no post codes. Tried using the cut open x4 slot, as well as a riser adapter in the remaining x8 slot, but no joy. Some sort of compatibility issue (PCIe 3.0 should run in a 2.0 slot, but maybe SMBus conflict?) or DOA (looks like it came in the original packaging so I don't think so...)? Can't tell really. Need to scrounge another machine to see if it's just that system, but a full on blocking boot fail by adding a PCIe card is kinda harsh in this day and age.

Update:
Was able to stuff it into a TX1310 in its PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and it booted alright, but it appears this does NOT use a PLX chip, but a chip by PMC-Sierra. Don't have a U.2 drive and cable yet to test data functionality, but I am detecting 9 PMC-Sierra management endpoints (but that's also coming up as PCI bridges). This may have similar consequences for the Intel AXP3SWX08080 since that also seems to use a PMC-Sierra PCIe switch chip