Intel® Processor and Intel® Core™ i3 N-Series

Datasheet, Volume 1 of 2

ID 759603
Date 01/04/2023
Version 001
Document Table of Contents

Flexible High Speed I/O

Flexible Input/Output (I/O) is a technology that allows some of the PCH High Speed I/O (HSIO) lanes to be configured for connection to a PCIe* Controller, an Extensible Host Controller Interface (XHCI) USB 3.2 Controller, or an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) SATA Controller. Flexible I/O enables customers to optimize the allocation of the PCH HSIO interfaces to better meet the I/O needs of their system.

Acronyms

Description

USB

Universal Serial Bus

PCIe*

PCI Express* (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express*)

SATA

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment

HSIO

High Speed Input/Output

UFS

Universal Flash Storage

The figure below shows the High Speed I/O (HSIO) lane multiplexing:

Flexible HSIO Lane Multiplexing

The 9 Flexible HSIO Lanes [11:8,6,3:0] supports the following configurations:

  1. Up to nine PCIe* Lanes
    • A maximum of five PCIe* Root Ports (or devices) can be enabled
    • PCIe* Lanes 1-4 (PCIe* Controller #1), 7 (PCIe* Controller #2), and 9-12 (PCIe* Controller #3) must be individually configured.
  2. Up to four USB 3.2 Gen 1x1/2x1 Lanes
    • A maximum of four USB 3.2 Gen 1x1/2x1 Ports (or devices) can be enabled.
    • USB 3.2  Gen 1x1 = 5 GT/s
    • USB 3.2  Gen 2x1 = 10 GT/s
  3. Up to two SATA Lanes
    • A maximum of two SATA Ports (or devices) can be enabled.
  4. Supports two Lane 1x2 Universal Flash Storage (UFS)
  5. For unused USB 3.2/PCIe* Combo Lanes, the unused lanes must be statically assigned to PCIe* or USB 3.2 via the USB 3.2/PCIe* Combo Port Soft Straps through the Intel Flash Image Tool (FIT) tool.