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To: srvhap who wrote (27725)	8/29/2000 10:27:31 PM
From: trendmastr	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29386

KJ, Doug, Techno, Ice et al - I'm getting confused by all the cooks in the Infiniband kitchen - it seems that some are working on the same dish. Just how can one discern who is adding what ingredients to the Infiniband pie? LU with host channel adapters? Isn't that something that Q is - or should - be doing? If LU is doing it, does it mean that Q isn't? sign me, Confused in Chicago tm Lucent, Intel reveal Infiniband product plans 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."

To: srvhap who wrote (27725)	8/30/2000 7:33:15 AM
From: KJ. Moy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

<<K.J what are the land mines your looking for. Do you buy into Kumar's (sp) ideas that FC is basically a deadend in 2 yrs? >> I am not looking for specific land mines per se. I worry about press releases being misinterpreted. I believe FC switching will make the migration to IB switching without much problem. The migration path, however, is unclear at the moment. What I mean is that server/storage companies are selling FC products now. When IB hba/switches are available, how do these same companies(server/storage/switch/hba) migrate from FC to IB and yet provide backward compatibility?