Craig,
Sorry for the late reply. I've been busy. My read on this PCI-X architecture is that it is trying to eliminate the conventional bus structure. Datas move within chips, minimum or no storing in a 'bus', thus makes it super fast. It wants 'fabric' implementation. I believe they are talking about switch/fabric in a generic term, not necessarily FC. Will it post a threat to other fabric manufacturer such as FC? I don't think so. FC was designed to be a hybrid channel/network. It allows distance, more devices to be connected via channel or a 'FC NET'. What Intel/IBM/HWP are talking about here is an infant product, no definition of how it would interface with other products. In other words, there are no standards. It focus on a design which would accelerate the channel speed and channel speed only. I think I read a comment from the article, 'faster to wait' . Look how long FC has come along. Even with a well defined standard, many twist and turn, existing product supports, private loop, public loop, fabric, pt to pt. Private loop devices were not supposed to participate in 'fabric login', somehow companies manage to force switch vendor to put in supports for them for legitimate reasons. Bottom line, this new design may be for some specific applications yet to be defined.
KJ |
