more on PCI-X
IBM introduces the industry's first standard
PCI-X Bridge for increased I/O performance
East Fishkill, NY, November 7, 2000
IBM today announced the availability of the industry's first standardized PCI-X
bridge intended for enterprise applications and systems requiring high I/O
performance.
PCI-X is an evolutionary upgrade to PCI, the standard I/O technology in wide
use today. PCI-X technology significantly increases bus capacity of the
conventional PCI bus bandwidth, extending the 66MHz standard to 133MHz
performance using either a 32-bit or 64-bit bus. PCI-X is intended to support
high-bandwidth applications with enhanced performance in storage area
networks (SANs), enterprise computing, and voice and data communication
systems.
"The push for faster data rates has put a premium on extremely high-speed
designs," said Tom Reeves, director, Storage Networking products, IBM
Microelectronics. "IBM is helping to ease the transition from bus architecture
to switched fabrics with the first industry-standard 133MHz PCI-X bridge.
Using our PCI-X intellectual property and ASIC strengths, IBM is enabling our
customers to develop advanced technologies that address the increasing
need for I/O performance."
Storage and systems vendors currently developing or evaluating applications
based on IBM's new PCI-X technology included Adaptec, American
Megatrends, Emulex Corporation and Mylex.
"Adaptec is pleased to be utilizing IBM's 133MHz PCI-X bridge as it will
enable us to accelerate the delivery of a multi-channel PCI-X Fibre Channel
host bus adapter to market, giving our customers first access to the
technology," said Peter Aylaian, marketing manager of Adaptec's Storage
Networking Group.
The PCI-X technology was designed for systems requiring higher bandwidth
to address faster I/O technologies of Ethernet, SCSI, Fibre Channel, and
processors interconnected as a cluster. The PCI-X protocol is designed to
integrate with these technologies and can improve the I/O efficiency of these
advanced technologies.
The new IBM PCI-X bridge product is backward compatible with the PCI bus
standard, ensuring that investments made in PCI-based systems are portable
to the newer and faster PCI-X environment. PCI-X also offers added
performance and flexibility, minimizing the trade-off between PCI slots and
bus speed. The bridge connects two electrically separate PCI-X bus domains,
allowing concurrent operations on both buses. This results in optimal
utilization of the buses in various system configurations and enables
hierarchical expansion of I/O bus structures. The chip also supports
configuration of PCI or PCI-X mode on either bus in any combination. |
