The Advanced Switching Interconnect Special Interest Group (ASI SIG) released a version 1.1 specification for the Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI). ASI technology, based on PCI Express, enables the standardization of proprietary backplane architectures. Common physical-link and data-link layers with the PCI Express standard enable the ASI technology to exploit a vast ecosystem of products currently available in the market.
The new specification release incorporates a variety of new technical features and benefits such as a generic encapsulation mechanism that can be used for any new Protocol Interface’s defined (called “PI-2”) and the capability to support peer to peer communications between any PCI Express based processors or I/O devices (called “Programmed IO” or “PIO”). The announcement is the first in a series of developments from the ASI SIG in 2005, leading up to the availability of silicon.
The ASI SIG said availability of the 1.1 specification signifies the increasing momentum Advanced Switching has gained over the past year in providing a high speed interconnect alternative to Ethernet targeted for backplane and extended backplane usage. Along with its key new features — including PI2 and PIO translations, the 1.1 release is indicative of the specification maturity and readiness in the industry for silicon availability starting 1H’05.
http://www.asi-sig.org
- The Advanced Switching Interconnect SIG is a non-profit collaborative trade organization chartered with providing a switched fabric interconnect standard. The board of directors includes, Agere, Alcatel, Huawei, IDT, Intel, Siemens, Vitesse and Xilinx.
