Infiniband, The Ins and Outs of Language Abuse
OK, I'll admit that several thousand times 2.5Gbps is a big number, but no way is it infinite.... Be it hype? Be it hyper? Please be the judge!
Infiniband(SM) Trade Association website:
infinibandta.org
Membership Roster looks like a who's who in the entire industry:
infinibandta.org
"Lucent, Intel reveal Infiniband product plans"
eet.com
By Loring Wirbel
EE Times
(08/29/00, 4:32 p.m. EST)
SAN JOSE, Calif. — With a final spec still being drawn, Intel and Lucent have unveiled product plans for the high-speed Infiniband I/O technology.
Intel Corp. will offer three initial components to support Infiniband — a host channel adapter, switching engine and target channel adapter — while Lucent Technologies Inc.'s microelectronics group will sample a four-channel serializer/deserializer device.
The announcements come as finishing touches are being applied to the Infiniband spec, which is expected to allow systems with several thousand connections, each with dedicated bandwidth of 2.5 Gbits/second. Tom Macdonald, co-chair of the Infiniband trade association and a general manager with Intel's fabric components division, called the spec 90 percent complete, with the final version due in October.
Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for Intel's fabric components division, said the company's three products will be delivered in volume in time for OEMs to implement them into systems some time next year. "Starting a new spec and doing it in just a year is about as good as it ever gets," Pappas said.
Meanwhile, Lucent is moving ahead with its own Infiniband products. Sujal Shah, director of computer I/O marketing, said the 2.5-Gbit/s serializer/deserializer device is based on the 0.13-micron COM2 process, so the device dissipates less than a watt when all four channels are active. The LU6X14FT is flexible enough to use in Fibre Channel, Ethernet, 1394 or backplane applications.
To integrate analog and digital blocks with a 1.5-V interface, Lucent turned to Bell Labs for advanced phase-locked loop and voltage regulator implementations. John Khoury, general manager of platform technologies at Bell Labs, said they were needed to meet Infiniband jitter requirements. Bell Labs developed an autocalibration method to keep PLLs producing very low jitter over the full data range of 1.0625 Gbits/s to 3.125 Gbits/s.
The serializer/deserializer can accept data rates of 1, 1.25, 2, 2.5 and 3.125 Gbits/s, with each channel operating independently at any of the rates, for an aggregate throughput of more than 12 Gbits/s. There is an 8-bit/10-bit parallel interface, allowing the device to accept 8-bit encoded or 10-bit unencoded data at the parallel port. The low-speed system clock synthesizes the high-speed serial bit clock. The output can drive either coaxial or optical media.
The chip, packaged in 208-pin PBGAM modules, is in early alpha sampling. It will be in production in the first quarter of 2001, when pricing will be announced.
While the chip was designed with Fibre Channel and Ethernet in mind, Shah said it will work with high-speed packet-switched Infiniband applications when Infiniband is finished this fall.
Infiniband results from a merger of the Future I/O group and the Next-Generation I/O camp, which until last summer were working on separate I/O technologies to link servers, peripherals and other systems that need a high-bandwidth connection.
"Unlike 1394 or USB, everyone supports Infiniband, since it represents the merged interests of Future I/O and NGIO," Shah said. "We expect a rapid ramp in demand for Infiniband."
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Comments welcomed, Ray |
