IBM Corp for one is hungry for Gigabits-per-second communications capability between processors and for linking peripherals, and Camarillo, California-based Gallium Arsenide pioneer, Vitesse Semiconductor Corp is doing something about it. The company reports that it is developing a low-cost, low-power ANSI X3T9.3 Fibre Channel-compatible chip set designed to be used as a computer-to-computer and computer-to-peripheral interface – and the work is being done in partnership with disk drive behemoth Seagate Technology Corp, and Dallas-based disk controller manufacturer Interphase Corp. The set is being designed to provide a low-cost standards-based integrated means to achieve serial data communications at up to 1Gbps. The first application intended for the new devices will be to provide a serial fibre-optic or coaxial link between high performance computer systems, from file servers to supercomputers, and high performance disk drives or disk clusters. By serialising the link, real-time communications can be provided cost-effectively over optical fibre in medium to long haul applications or over co-ax for short distances. The devices are being designed to be fully compatible with the ANSI Fibre Channel Standard, which operates in point-to-point or loop mode and specifies a communications protocol at up to 1.0625Gbps. The set under development is a modified, much lower cost version of the G-TAXIchip devices announced by Vitesse earlier this year (CI No 1,874) and will implement the physical FC-0 portion of the standard, which includes clock synthesis and recovery, and serialisation and de-serialisation of the encoded data. The devices will feature an on-chip phase-locked loop for internal clock multiplication and clock recovery and will operate from a single +3.3V supply. Samples of the chip set are planned for year-end with production set to start first quarter 1993.
