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Buses and Interconnects: The Next Generation

Posted by Hemos on from the coming-soon dept.

mkarpinski writes "ExtremeTech has posted a nice overview of the next generation of peripheral buses and interconnects including PCI-X, InfiniBand, 3GIO, and HyperTransport. From the article, "All these future interconnects and buses have a few things in common. They use packet-based, point-to-point connections; in fact, InfiniBand implements a full switch fabric. They provide bandwidth in multiples of that offered by PCI. They decrease latency significantly, with HyperTransport and RapidIO showing the most dramatic decreases, crucial for their target communications and embedded markets. And all four strive to reduce pin counts in order to conserve power and system real estate." Open the floodgates!"

6 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. wake up everyone. by laserjet · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Many people still don't fully understand and cannot effectively differentiate InfiniBand from PCI-X from RapidIO, or 3GIO from HyperTransport, for example."

    geez, what are you guys, a bunch of idiots? I can't *believe* that some people STILL don't fully understant inifiBand form PCI-X from RapidIO, or 3GIO! What is the world coming to?

    --
    Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
  2. Re:Now Taking Bets... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I used kermit and xmodem many times back in the early 90s. Yet, I still don't feel I've lived. What am I doing wrong?

  3. Is it Friday yet? by bziman · · Score: 2, Funny
    You know you've had a rough week as a software engineer and you see "Buses and Interconnects" and you start thinking about advances in mass transit and wondering if "interconnect" is a British term. TGIF.

    --brian

  4. Lame Names by ENOENT · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why do hardware makers insist on using marketroid-designed names? I'm going to stay with PCI until somebody comes up with a new type of bus: the Magic Bus.

    Every day, I put a request on the queue.
    Ooh yeah, it's the MAGIC BUS!
    To get on the bus to my CPU.
    Ooh yeah, the MAGIC BUS!

    --
    That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
  5. Re:differences with HPPI6400? by gUmbi · · Score: 2, Funny


    What is the difference between this stuff and what Cray & SGI did in the mid '90s? Same speeds, point to point (~ 6GB/s). I think the MSS on HPPI was large, but what are the other differences?


    The main difference? It won't cost $8 million dollars.

  6. Re:The killer application by athlon02 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well for one, mechanical hard drives have had their day in the sun and probably in the next 10 years or so having say a 15GB SSD (solid state drive - basically a drive made from nonvolatile memory) won't be unheard of. In such a case we'll have "instant on" computers and then you should really see a big difference in thinks like Hypertransport vs. AGP. Right now mechanical devices are big hindrances to electronic parts, just as electronic parts are to say fiber optics.