Agilent Technologies Introduces Industry's First 4 Gb/s PCI Express Fibre Channel Controller for Storage Networking.SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden -- Four-Port Tachyon tachyon (tăk`ēŏn'), hypothetical elementary particle that travels only at speeds exceeding that of light. According to the theory of relativity, the speed of light is the limiting velocity for all ordinary material particles. QX4 Device Offers Storage OEMs Breakthrough Performance, Lower Cost Per Port Agilent Technologies This article needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :A) today announced the industry's first 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel controller IC to use the new PCI Express A high-speed peripheral interconnect from Intel introduced in 2002. Note that although sometimes abbreviated "PCX," PCI Express is not the same as "PCI-X" (see PCI-SIG and PCI-X for comparison). As a result of the confusion, "PCI-E" or "PCIe" is the accepted abbreviation. system bus. The latest device in Agilent's Tachyon series of industry-leading Fibre Channel controllers offers storage OEMs breakthrough performance and port density in a single chip. The Tachyon QX4 implements an eight-lane PCI Express system bus, which can support four times the bandwidth of prior PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). and PCI-X (PCI eXtended) An enhanced PCI bus technology originally developed by IBM, HP and Compaq that is backward compatible with existing PCI cards. PCI and 32-bit PCI-X slots are physically the same, and PCI cards can plug into PCI-X slots. systems, up to 4 GB/s. The new PCI Express controller is on display at Agilent booth 1043 through Sept. 9. "Agilent was the first company to introduce a dual-channel 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel controller, and we've done it again with the first 4 Gb/s controller featuring four Fibre Channel ports and an eight-lane PCI Express system bus," said Erik Ottem, marketing director of Agilent's Input/Output Solutions Division. "The Tachyon QX4 enables breakthrough bandwidth and I/Os per second performance, and uses the same programming interface as earlier Tachyon products, preserving existing firmware/software investments and speeding time to market for Agilent customers." The HPFC-6400A Tachyon QX4 Fibre Channel controller IC provides the industry's highest performance for RAID disk arrays, storage subsystems, virtualization An umbrella term for enhancing a computer's ability to do work. Following are the ways virtualization is used. Hardware Virtualization Partitioning the computer's memory into separate and isolated "virtual machines" simulates multiple machines within one physical computer. devices, storage routers, host bus adapters and host computer motherboards for mid- to high-end storage applications that use multiprocessor systems. Agilent is also making a four-channel 2 Gb/s PCI Express controller available with similar features. The Agilent Tachyon 4 Gb/s state-machine architecture easily scales to 8 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s. This architecture provides numerous independent functional blocks, which concurrently process inbound data, outbound data, and control and commands in hardware. The result is simultaneous, parallel processing of inbound data, outbound data, and hardware control and commands to maximize bandwidth and minimize latency and I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output overhead. The Tachyon QX4 supports 4, 2 and 1 Gb/s data transfer rates and offers an easy upgrade path to 4 Gb/s speeds while allowing design re-use for existing customers. Agilent provides an extensive API tool set through its Tachyon software development kit (rev. 3.4), including sample drivers to enable new customers to quickly develop software solutions. The Tachyon QX4 is part of the industry's broadest solution set for 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel, including fiber-optic transceivers, physical layer ICs, board-level solutions and test equipment. The Tachyon QX4 also incorporates T-10 Data Integrity Field (DIF (1) (Data Interchange Format) A standard file format for spreadsheet and other data structured in row and column form. Originally developed for VisiCalc, DIF is now under Lotus' jurisdiction. ) support to improve end-to-end data reliability from the host server to the target storage devices. With the faster data rate of 4 Gb/s, the need to detect corrupted data is magnified. T-10 DIF coding provides this detection and stays with the data for its entire life within the storage array. The DIF is an 8-byte protection field with a CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Checking) An error checking technique used to ensure the accuracy of transmitting digital data. The transmitted messages are divided into predetermined lengths which, used as dividends, are divided by a fixed divisor. and can be inserted into the data stream to verify Fibre Channel payloads on their way to the disk or the host. This is implemented in the Tachyon state-machines (hardware), and provides a higher level of data integrity without compromising performance. U.S. Pricing and Availability Samples of the 4 Gb/s HPFC-6400A Tachyon QX4 and the 2 Gb/s HPFC-6200A Tachyon QX2 are expected to be available for select customers through Agilent's direct sales channel in the fourth quarter of 2004. Production volumes will be available in the first half of 2005. Pricing is available upon request. Agilent 4 Gb Fibre Channel Solutions Agilent is a leading supplier of 4 Gb Fibre Channel component, board and test solutions. No other vendor offers protocol, physical layer, and fiber-optic components combined with leading-edge signal and protocol testing. More than half of all storage-networked arrays use Agilent components. More information is available at www.agilent.com/view/storage. About Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 28,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2003. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com. Note to Editors: Please direct reader inquiries to Agilent Semiconductor Products Group at 800-235-0312, or e-mail us at semiconductorsupport@agilent.com. Further technology, corporate citizenship Corporate Citizenship The extent to which businesses are socially responsible in meeting legal, ethical and economic responsibilities placed on them by shareholders. The aim it to create higher standards of living and quality of life in the community in which it operates, while and executive news is available on the Agilent news site at www.agilent.com/go/news. |
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