Editor: Linley
Gwennap In This Issue
A Guide to Switch Fabrics is available for immediate delivery. Are you up to speed on this dynamic market? For more information, visit our web site. Advanced Switching Comes Out at Supercomm At Supercomm, the Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) community came out strong with a host of announcements and demonstrations. Vendors making announcements included Agilent, Denali, IDT, Intel, StarGen, and Xyratex. Agilent promoted its AdvancedTCA probing solution for testing high-speed data planes. Denali announced plans to offer its verification IP, PureSpec, which is used during silicon development to verify functionality, compliance, and interoperability for ASI and PCI Express designs. Intel disclosed details of its AdvancedTCA platform for ASI and IDT discussed technology to bridge between CSIX and ASI StarGen and Xyratex stand out as the first vendors to offer ASI silicon. StarGen's Merlin is an 80Gbps switch for up to 10 ASI ports comprised of four lanes (x4) each. Merlin may also be configured for other ports widths such as five 16Gbps (x8) ports. Merlin integrates a PI-8 leaf bridge for PCI Express devices, which allows it to connect directly to PCI Express peripherals or end points without external bridging. With customer samples expected in July, StarGen should be the first vendor to offer an ASI switch. Although Xyratex has plans to offer a complete ASI fabric, its first offering (TP) is an ASI port device for bridging to PCI Express. The TP is a 40Gbps device capable of supporting up to four x4 user ports. The number of lanes may be aggregated into two x8 ports or a single x16 port. Using two other devices that are on the company's roadmap, the architecture can be scaled up to 640Gbps. Xyratex expects to sample the TP in 3Q05. Because Xyratex is a systems vendor, it is exploring partnerships that might make its silicon available to a broader market. We expect initial deployment for ASI components to be in systems that use PCI Express and need enhanced capabilities. These applications include I/O virtualization, storage subsystems, and control planes. With early availability Stargen and Xyratex have established the pole position among ASI vendors. To capitalize on this position, each vendor needs to move from first silicon to production-worthy silicon, while Xyratex needs to additionally develop marketing channels. Combined with the other announcements at Supercomm, ASI continues to gather momentum. —JB Complete
coverage of ASI chips appears in our new report A
Guide to Switch Fabrics, 4th Edition.
Level 5's first product, dubbed EtherFabric, is a 2xGbE NIC with PCI-X 1.0 host interface and software for Linux. What makes EtherFabric unique is that applications can access the network directly, bypassing the operating system completely. Like iWARP using a uDAPL interface, EtherFabric's OS-bypass eliminates context switches as applications access the network. Unlike uDAPL, however, applications do not require modifications to take advantage of EtherFabric. Each application (user) space has a dedicated EtherFabric TCP/IP software stack, while the EtherFabric NIC hardware multiplexes the traffic from each stack. The result is reduced CPU utilization and latency as compared with a typical GbE controller. Level 5 is selling EtherFabric both to OEMs and to end-user channels, with pricing set at $295 and $495 respectively. At these prices, EtherFabric undercuts other advanced GbE NIC products such as Ammasso's iWARP NIC and Alacritech's 2xGbE TOE NIC. Like Alacritech's TOE products, however, EtherFabric requires the installation of a proprietary TCP/IP stack. End users have been reluctant to adopt such products and the Linux developer community has also shown resistance. Although Level 5's product delivers clear performance benefits, the company faces an uphill battle in gaining broad-market adoption. —BW Complete
coverage of GbE controller chips appears in our report
A
Guide to Gigabit and 10G Ethernet Silicon. Earlier this month, Mellanox announced six new InfiniBand products: three chips and three adapter cards. The chips include a single-port 20Gbps host controller, a dual-port 20Gbps host controller, and a 24-port switch with 20Gbps ports. The single- and dual-port host devices can operate from host memory, while the dual-port device provides the option to use local DDR memory for improved throughput. Both devices provide an eight-lane (x8) PCI Express interface to the host. The switch chip has a total capacity of 480Gbps and can switch among 24 ports operating at 20Gbps or eight ports at 60Gbps. The three host adapters (HCA) include a single-port card, dual-port card, and dual-port card with local memory. Compared to earlier InfiniBand products, these InfiniBand DDR devices double the data rate per link from 2.5Gbps to 5Gbps. This increase enables Mellanox's new products to provide 20Gbps using the same number of links as earlier products. These devices may be used with a 12-pair InfiniBand cable for 60Gbps links between switches, reducing the number of cables among systems. With 20Gbps links, Mellanox believes users can consolidate the separate computing and storage (FC) switches into a single InfiniBand switch, which would be a lower cost solution for the user. A potential issue with this, however, is that the OEM is locked into a technology that has principally a single supplier. After
announcing a $69 host-adapter chip, Mellanox is announcing
this new 20Gbps HCA device at $85.
This price is considerably
less than alternative 10Gbps technologies such as 10GbE.
The company's
adapter pricing is less than half the price of competing
technologies like 10GbE and Myrinet. Mellanox has
QDR technology on its
roadmap, which will enable 40Gbps ports. Consequently, Mellanox
should
keep InfiniBand ahead of competing technologies for the next
few years.
—JB Join us on July 21 for a free one-day seminar on Access System Design. This technical program will kick off with an access technology overview by Bob Wheeler, senior analyst with The Linley Group. The morning session will address Access-Focused CPUs while the afternoon session will concentrate on Access-Focused NPUs. Also included is a panel discussion on Merging Control- and Data-Plane Functions. The seminar wraps up with a networking reception complete with exhibits. The following are program highlights you won't want to miss:
For the full program of topics and speakers, visit our web site. The seminar is free to qualified individuals who register early. For complete details and registration information, visit the seminar page. This event is sponsored by The
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Wintegra, AMCC, and Ethernity. A Guide to Communications Processors provides the deep insight and technical analysis you need to understand the devices found in this segment. This new edition of one of our most popular reports has been extensively revised to incorporate new announcements made since the release of the second edition. The report provides thorough coverage of leading vendors Freescale, Broadcom, and Intel as well as emerging vendors such as Cavium and Ubicom. Which products are poised for success and why? How will these vendors be positioned as this market continues to expand? Only The Linley Group's unique technology analysis can provide this forward-looking view. Unlike typical market research, this report provides informed technology analysis rather than quantitative market data. Get the product comparisons and conclusions you need to help make sense of this evolving market. Order by July 29, 2005 to get a special prepublication discount. For more information on this new report, visit our web site.
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