Is there a way to connect a PCIe mass storage device to the Thor Drive AGX Dev Kit?

Autonomous Vehicles DRIVE AGX Thor DRIVE AGX Thor General
1

DRIVE OS Version: 7.0.3

Issue Description:

Is there a way to connect a PCIe device over the MiniSAS connectors such as an IcyDock Mini-SAS enclosure?

The use case is to connect high speed external storage to the Thor Drive AGX dev kit for logging raw camera data from multiple sensors and a USB-C connection does not have the bandwidth to support multiple raw feeds simultaneously, nor is a good connector for staying securely connected in a moving vehicle.

We have tried updating the device tree to enable controller C5 per the SDK docs (which is connected to Port 1 per the mechanical and installation guide) and did see a new PCIe device show up in the device tree when running lspci, however connecting an IcyDock on both the external MiniSAS connectors showed no device negotiation attempts as if nothing was connected. We used a Mini SAS HD SFF-8644 to mini SAS HD SFF-8643 cable (like this one) to connect the two devices.

We saw in the mechanical installation document that the only documented use case to connect something to those external PCIe connectors is for Thor to Thor communications and that “Standard PCIe Mini-SAS cables will NOT work” - however, is that only for the Thor-to-Thor communications use case that a standard PCIe Mini-SAS cable would not work? I would expect having all the documentation to configure the PCIe controllers in the device tree means that there are other use cases aside from the Thor-to-Thor communications feature.

Related, can we confirm that the C5 and C4 PCIe controllers are what is connected to Port 1 and Port 2 on the outside of the dev kit?

Thank you for your assistance.

3

Dear @umansky,
Does Connect an SSD to DRIVE AGX Thor help to clarify ?

4

I saw that post but I wanted to ask more specific questions in a new topic since it was closed. A USB-C option won’t work for our use case and we’d like to avoid it.

That first topic has the reply “PCIe connections to external NVMe SSD via MiniSAS is not supported via forum” → Is there a different support route we can take here instead of the forums? The documentation looks like the base connections and PCIe controllers should be able to support this use case.

6

PCIe device over the MiniSAS connectors does not work Out of box and is out of forum support scope.
You can reach out to your NV Representative to evaluate your request and see additional support can be provided out of the forum to support your use case.

7

Ok, thank you for the quick replies, we’ll reach out to our rep.