The 929XL features three on-chip ARM controllers, one for each channel and a third for management purposes. The chip interfaces via a 64-bit 133-MHz PCI-X bus. Each channel can achieve performance levels of 130,000 I/O operations per second in initiator mode and 85,000 I/O ops per second in target mode.
The device comes in a 456-pin PBGA housing and is pin-compatible with the previously available LSIFC929X non-DIF version. A JTAG interface is included. In addition to these chips, LSI Logic offers a complete line of FC HBA cards and related products.
PMC-Sierra is another recent contributor to the 4-Gbit/s FC progress. The PM8377 PBC 4x4G and PM8369 PBX 18x4G chips are four- and 18-port intelligent FC port bypass controllers, respectively. They are designed for enterprise-class disk enclosure applications and are fully compatible with PMC-Sierra's 2-Gbit/s PBC devices. PMC-Sierra also has a new four-channel SERDES device, the PM8386 QuadPHY 4 GFC, for FC fabric switches and HBAs. All of these parts are available now.
While there are few 10-Gbit/s FC or iSCSI systems in use or even available, they are on their way. More and more products are becoming available to make them affordable.
One example is Quake Technologies' new QT-2022 10-Gbit/s serial-to-XAUI physical-layer device. Designed for 10GE or FC systems, it's fully bidirectional and handles four 3.125-Gbit/s XAUI channels and a single 10.3- to 10.57-Gbit/s serial stream. The QT-2022 produces less than 0.7 ps of rms jitter and has a receive sensitivity of 10 mV p-p. The built-in receive equalizer recovers data over as much as 12 in. of FR4 PC board trace. The unit operates from a 1.2-V supply and has a power consumption of only 900 mW. The chip fully complies with the IEEE 802.3ae 10GE standard and the INCITS/T11 10-Gbit/s FC standards, as well as the standards for the XENPAK/XPAK/X2 and XPF MSA transceiver packaging.
One of the hottest products to emerge for new iSCSI systems is the Silverback Systems iSNAP2110 IP storage network access processor (Fig. 4). This device is an upgraded version of the earlier iSNAP 2100 introduced last year. It provides a fast and easy way to make iSCSI initiator NICs and target interfaces for storage units. The 2110 is designed as an iSCSI TCP/IP offload engine. It fully terminates all TCP/IP connections and implements upper-layer Protocol Data Unit (PDU) awareness. The result is performance of up to 220,000 I/O operations per second and a throughput of 440 Mbytes/s.
The iSNAP2110 is designed for the PCI-X bus and features two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. It also allows implementation of upper-layer protocols such as RDMA. A key feature of this device is that it is firmware programmable and may be reprogrammed and updated as required. The chip comes in a 748-pin EPBGA package and dissipates 4 W. Samples and production quantities are available now.
As for the future, look for that anticipated growth and lots of new products. SANs users with Fibre Channel will no doubt settle in at the new 4-Gbit/s rate for the time being, but great progress is being made in both 10-Gbit/s FC and iSCSI. Lots more will come, such as the new Content Addressable Storage (CAS) systems on the horizon and, who knows, maybe even wireless SANs.