10Gb Fibre Channel on the way. Happy birthday to the thread.
fibrechannel.org
FCIA Announces 10Gb Fibre Channel With 12X Performance
10GFC WG Meets Major Milestone - 10GFC Standard Submission On-Track For 2001
San Francisco, Calif., October 17, 2000 -The Fibre Channel Industry
Association (FCIA) announced today that the 10GFC (10 Gigabit Fibre
Channel) working group has completed the core content of its proposed
10GFC standard, which was started in August of 1999 under the direction of
the ANSI/NCITS T11 technical committee.
"The completion of the 10GFC core content, which includes multiple
technology roadmaps, leverages the work done by the IEEE P802.3ae Task
Force and shares a common link architecture and components with Ethernet
and InfiniBand," states FCIA Chairman Skip Jones. "We are on schedule and
the final standard to provide 10GFC links to the installed base of Fibre
Channel implementations as well are expected to be ready in early 2002."
The core content of the proposed 10Gbit Fibre Channel standard includes all
of the logic elements, roadmaps and media access for single and multi-mode
fiber-based LAN and WAN physical layer devices which support media and
corresponding link distances from 15m up to over 10km. 10GFC will support
MAN and WAN transports through direct support for native dark fiber (DWDM)
and SONET/SDH resulting in high-speed interconnection of SAN islands
through MAN and WAN. This enables applications such as geographically
distributed clusters for disaster tolerance and storage virtualization. While
preserving the Fibre Channel frame format and size, therefore providing full
backward compatibility with existing standards, the draft also addresses
support of media selected from ISO/IEC 11801 and of a data/payload rate of
approximately 10Gbps. The core content's roadmaps addresses speed and
feeds, protocol, fabric services, management, security and technology. In
addition, the content draft provides information for various interfaces, including
disk drive physical interface, removable small form factor connector and
transceivers.
The 10Gbit Fibre Channel standard takes into account compatibility for
investments made in today's 1 and 2 Gigabit Fibre Channel implementations,
sharing the same common link services and specifications. Also, users will only
have to be concerned with one physical infrastructure for multiple network
applications. Just like Fibre Channel and Ethernet today share the same
optical 1Gbit spec, cables, and transceiver infrastructure - Fibre Channel,
Infiniband, and Ethernet will all share the same physical transmission
infrastructure. "Fibre Channel, Ethernet and InfiniBand will use the same
10Gbit physical layer technology - same cable, connectors and optical
transceivers," adds Jones. "The industry will enjoy great economies of scale
since they will only need to cultivate one physical technology for all three
network applications - the benefit to the IT and network administrators are that
they need to deploy only one type of cable plant."
While 10GFC actually translates to a 12x raw baud rate increase over 1Gbit
Fibre Channel, baud rate alone does not indicate efficiencies and performance
delivered by the associated link and protocol implementation. For instance,
most of today's state-of-the-art Fibre Channel links are capable of operating at
over 95% efficiency. Because Fibre Channel has already pioneered protocol
and link optimization in hardware and firmware - today, half-duplex 1Gbit Fibre
Channel delivers 95-98MB (100MB/s max) and half-duplex 2Gbit Fibre
Channel delivers better than 195MB/s (200MB/s max.). Concludes Jones, "We
expect to see the same levels of integration and efficiencies as the industry
migrates these "SAN-tailored" products to 10Gbit."
10Gbit Fibre Channel will provide users with an easy migration and
preservation of today's explosive Fibre Channel technology and SAN topology
adoption. Users have a safe migration utilizing Fibre Channel's exclusive and
unique capabilities that make SAN topologies a reality today and into the
foreseeable future.
About the FCIA
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is an international organization
of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers, systems vendors, industry
professionals, and end users. With more than 190 members and affiliates in
the United States, Europe and Japan, the FCIA is committed to delivering a
broad base of Fibre Channel infrastructure to support a wide array of industry
applications within the mass storage and IT-based arenas. FCIA Working
Groups focus on specific aspects of the technology that target both vertical
and horizontal markets, including storage, video, networking and SAN
Management. For information, please contact the Fibre Channel Industry
Association at (415) 750-8355 or via e-mail at info@fibrechannel.org, or visit
the FCIA web site at fibrechannel.org. |
