The HDB8231 HDEC Series large format backplane delivers the benefits of the High Density Embedded Computing architecture to up to eighteen (18) PCI Express commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) plug-in option cards. The design of the backplane leverages the eighty (80) lanes of Gen3 PCI Express from the dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v3 series processors on an HEP8225 HDEC Series system host board to maximize system longevity and application flexibility.