Data link for CLEO III to connect event builder and level 3 trigger

This page is NOT exhaustive NOR is it necessarily up to date. If you are looking for real up-to-date information on a myriad of High Speed Interconnect technology then check out HSI at CERN.

Ideal solution:
at least 30-40MBytes/sec bandwidth, cheap (few thousand $), PMC card on one side, PCI card on the other side, driver software for VxWorks and Digital Unix.

Some Commercial options:

Quickring:
no longer exists. Project was discontinued by National Semiconductors.

S-Link:
unidirectional modules exist for PMC, no driver software, no PCI, basically a CERN development that is picked up by industry

HIPPI:
40/20 MBytes/sec, supposedly software available from HP, but otherwise similar story as S-Link, unclear if PMC and PCI cards available. Check out HIPPI on www at CERN to learn more. Gigalabs nominally sells PCI cards. Though, I wasn't too impressed by their response when I called them. They appear to be heavily betting on their Gigabit eithernet products. The Hippi product seems to be way down on their list of priorities.

DEC Memory Channel:
Encore sells PCI and PMC adaptable boards (PMC + 6U board for power and ground). No support for VxWorks is available. Advantage: Digital Unix and Windows NT drivers available. Price: about $6000 per link.

Multiple fast Ethernet:
RAMIX PMC664 = 2FastEthernet + i960 CPU + 8MByte DRAM on one PMC board => 17.5 MBytes/sec/card. => Use two such cards to achieve desired throughput!!! RAMIX PMC901 = PMC expansion card with 2 PMC slots + i960 + 1 FastEthernet + 32MByte DRAM ; i.e. in combination with "dumb" PMC661 (same as 664 except no i960) possibly 4*17.5 MBytes/sec !!! (PMC901 $1900; PMC661 $500) Software support for VxWorks and Digital Unix
RNS 2340-TX 4port FastEthernet PCI card available for $1195, but not with digital unix driver and it has no CPU on the card to deal with TCP/IP related interrupts!!! (has only DECchip8 21140 LAN coprocessor chip)
ZNYX sells 2port as well as 4port PCI card that include i960 CPU on the card. They are sending me more info in the mail.

FibreExpress from Systran:
50MBytes/sec, VxWorks driver, Windows NT driver, no Digital Unix in sight (they're waiting for a large enough customer to warrant the development costs). PCI $3000, PMC $3000, full speed optical link included, systained thoughput with 32-64KByte sequences, i.e. about 1K interrupts/sec at 32MBytes/sec. Bigger block size possible to decrease CPU load but then hardware limitations set in such that you no longer reach 50MBytes/sec throughput. Also exists for SBUS. PDF document

Ultra SCSI:
40MBytes/sec, have seen SBUS cards for $1100.

SCI :
Dolphin sells PCI-SCI card $2540 + $139 for the cable, this comes with driver software for NT or SCO unixware. These cards will ship May/June 1997. They are currently available at beta test sites.
Dolphin makes PMC cards for VMETRO. Last time I talked to VMETRO, they couldn't give me a clear answer on what software they will support. I know that V.Lindenstruth has VxWorks drivers written for his homegrown cards.
Throughput: 97MBytes/sec for Dolphin PCI cards.

PVIC from CES:
Contacted CES via their web cite. They never got back to me. Klaus picked up some info at CHEP97. This product is supposedly coming out "soon".

"Pamette" from DEC:
This is a PMC board, with a PCI interface chip (?), 4-5 Xilinx FPGA's, some SRAM, and some DRAM. I heard about it from John Haggerty (BNL) via Chris Bebek. DEC supposedly has Windows NT driver software that it is "basically giving away". I haven't pursued this any further because it seems a lot more work than any of the other possible solutions.

Gigabit Ethernet:
Official IEEE specs to be ratified sometime 1998. ( White paper ) Though, products are emerging already. Talked to somebody at ZNYX. They are selling first "prototype" PCI cards for about $3500 starting May 97. Cards are currently available at Betatest sites. Driver support is Windows NT now, Linux sometime this summer.
Problem: It's not at all obvious that we'll have commercial PMC modules available in time !!! Furthermore, a recent article ("Gigabit Ethernet: Fat Pipe or Pipe Bomb", Data Communications May 97) reports lack of interoperability as well as other problems that one might expect from an imature product/standard.