| Multi-Fabric Switching Enables New Architectures for Military Systems |
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| Dec 01 2006 | |
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advertisement: The result is a convergence toward 1/10 GbE as the fabric of choice for IPbased vehicular networks. Legacy systems are being transformed by adding GbE switch blades to form star or redundant dual-star networks within a VME64x box. New systems can leverage VPX backplanes to allow not just 1 GbE, but also 10 GbE interfaces in the backplane.
Although there are many existing standards for GbE, some of the more popular ones along with their key features include: • 1000 BaseT is typically used with copper backplanes for blade-to-blade or CPU-to-CPU communications; 1000 BaseSX is used for box-to-box optic connections; and XAUI for 10-GbE stacking or backbones. • Each 1-GbE interface can auto-negotiate between 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 1000 Mbps, or through link aggregation, can achieve multi-Gbps rates. • Near-future standards for Ethernet show promise to evolve to 802.3ap in the backplane (1000 BaseKX over 1 lane, 10 GBaseKX4 over 4 lanes, and 10 GBaseKR over 1 lane). • Next-generation 1/10 GbE switch chips are arriving on the market where each port can operate at 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 Gbps line rates. • Optimized 1 and 10 GbE NIC chips are arriving on the market that can remove networking bottlenecks through Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and protocol offload (e.g., a 10 GbE iWARP NIC can achieve 800 MBps with minimal loading on the processor for large data transfers). Already commoditized in the commercial world with an ever-increasing ecosystem that continuously drives down component costs while increasing performance, switch Gigabit Ethernet is now rapidly finding its way into just about every major military platform.Serial RapidIO Serial RapidIO (SRIO) is poised to play the role of the “inside the box” highperformance data mover in multi-processor signalprocessing applications. SRIO’s strength lies in its combination of low overhead and high-speed characteristics with features that make it one of the most suitable fabrics for processor-toprocessor communications. |
