Abstract
Non-proprietary I/O is seeing an increasing presence within the central
processing, printed circuit board, and IP communities. HyperTransport, PCI
Express, and RapidIO benefit from the strength of central special interest
groups (SIG). The SIG becomes the central point of aggregation for improving
I/O standards. HyperTransport 3.0 increased frequency from 1.4GHz per trace
line to 2.6GHz per line. PCI Express, the standard which currently has a 2.0
revision before its membership, increases the effective frequency from 2.5GHz
to 5GHz. Serial RapidIO also has a 2.0 revision before its members that
increases frequency from 3.125Gbaud to 6.25Gbaud.
The increased bandwidths serve to make the I/O more functional, but the
non-proprietary I/O is stretching out to new usages. In PCI Express 2.0, the
PCI-SIG is developing standards for cabling as well as defining single-root
virtualization I/O. With HyperTransport 3.0, methods for power consumption as
well as for cabling are introduced. The RapidIO Trade Association, for Serial
RapidIO 2.0, helped to define a new Management and Flow Control mechanism that
can process payloads of as many as 64KB from 64,000 different senders.
This In-Stat report examines what the implications of changes in the I/O means
on a device level. For example, the I/O requirements are different for
portable devices than for personal computers. The usages of HyperTransport,
PCI Express, and RapidIO are forecast for devices from 2004-2010.
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