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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!"

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. RapidIO to be built into PPC G5 by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Informative

    RapidIO is in the PPC G5 roadmap and will be in moto's first g5-based chip. I've been drooling for some time now...

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  2. More on HyperTransport by ppetrakis · · Score: 3, Informative

    API NetWorks just released a HyperTransport "Switch" , See the press release .
    Interesting stuff. The PDF has some more info

    Peter

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  3. Re:one can only hope... by Graymalkin · · Score: 3, Informative

    The other guy caught Bluetooth vs. 802.11b so I'll pick up USB vs. FireWire. What the fuck are you smoking? USB is a host based connection protocol and FireWire is a host independant protocol. That makes them not really even in the same ballpark. Just because they are both serial protocols don't mean jack shit. USB brokers all connections through a host controller, this host controller also acts as the switch for all communication on the bus. Everything has to pass through the host controller for any devices to talk to one another. FireWire is host independant which basically means every device on the bus is a peer of every other device (all devices are hosts). A FireWire DV camera can talk directly to a FW hard drive or DVD-RAM with no computer involved whatsoever. A USB webcam isn't going to be writing video to a USB hard drive any time soon because neither of them has a host controller. FireWire devices can also talk to each other directly rather than through a central host. Just because USB 2 is a high bandwidth version of USB doesn't mean it truely competes with FW. USB and FW are going to both be included in systems for a while since they both serve different purposes. You're not going to be seeing USB2 DV cameras for sale while FW cries in its corner.

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