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System designers of networking,
storage and computing systems face multiple challenges in
designing new systems that meet market needs. One major hurdle
is that today’s systems must support ever-increasing
bandwidth requirements. Such systems include personal
computers & servers, networking and storage systems,
office automation equipment and other systems. 10/100 Mbps
Ethernet was the norm just few years ago. In today’s
systems, 1 Gbps Ethernet (1GE) is a must with 10 Gbps Ethernet
(10GE) already emerging in high performance applications.
Similarly, these systems must maintain compatibility with the
existing infrastructure already deployed in the field. For
example, the design of new chassis’ and motherboards must be
able to interface to existing and already deployed add-on
cards to continue to build on the modular designs introduced a
few years ago. Finally, the challenge of time-to-market is a
reality that systems designers often face. All these
ingredients add up to a large set of requirements for system
designers.
Deployed
Systems too Burdened to Meet Growing Bandwidth Needs
As
if meeting such requirements were not enough, systems
designers also often have to tangle with the fact that quite
often, these requirements conflict with each other. On one
hand, the systems that designers are creating must meet very
stringent bandwidth and performance requirements. As
mentioned, the support for 1 GE is becoming almost a necessity
in most systems. A single 1 GE full duplex link requires at
least 250MB/sec of data transfer and system bandwidth. This
involves maintaining the bandwidth throughout the entire data path
including system buses and memory. Bandwidth requirements get worse with
systems supporting multiple GE ports.
On
the other hand, compatibility with existing infrastructure is
extremely important. A few years ago, modular systems were
introduced to enable the rapid deployment of a variety of
systems and applications. This modular architecture uses a
motherboard for the main processing and a number of daughter
or add-on cards to do application specific functions such as
network interface, and additional storage. A PCI bus was used
as the main bus and backbone to support this modular system
architecture, resulting in a very large number of deployed
add-on cards in the field based on PCI.
System designers cannot simply walk away from this
installed base of equipment. Rather, they have to architect
their designs to leverage new technology while at the same
time continue to use and leverage the existing PCI
infrastructure.
In addition to increased
bandwidth, today's applications often require more computing
power than what currently exists in single processors. It is not uncommon for applications to require
multiple gigahertz class processors to provide the necessary
computing and processing power. Furthermore, system designers
must preserve investments made over the years in software and
hardware across multiple generations of designs. This includes
leveraging existing device drivers in order to reduce time to
market and development costs.
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