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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...

    --
    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  2. 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.
  3. Re:The killer application by iso · · Score: 5, Flamebait

    The "killer application" for these technologies (at least HyperTransport and RapidIO) is mostly very high-end telecom infrastructure equipment. My last job involved working on the definition of a HyperTransport bridge product that was targeted for these types of systems. A good serialized interconnect is needed in these systems, as nothing else comes close in terms of speed and latency.

    PCI-X is also becoming very useful as a telecom backplane connector, and for drive arrays in high-end servers.

    Of course your message was completely stupid in the first place. Why is it that so many people on slashdot look at every technology as though the PC is the only important system on the planet? It's fine that all you use is your desktop PC, and it's fine that you wait for the most commoditized solutions to filter down to your local PC shop, but despite what you might think, the world doesn't revolve around PCs. Perhaps you'll want a HyperTransport video card in 2004, but your major Internet backbones aren't going to be connected through AGP4x today. Do yourself a favour and get a more rounded technical education.

    - j