Bridging the Gap: dataBLIZZARD & Reliaspan
communications interfaces. SBS Technologies Connectivity Products has addressed these demands with two breakthrough product lines: the dataBLIZZARD and Reliaspan products. The dataBLIZZARD software is the ultimate-performance, point-to-point communications interface that enables two computers to share data at the hardware level with little or no software overhead.
The dataBLIZZARD peripheral component interconnect (PCI) interface that supports data sharing is flexible, providing the highest performance allowed by the PCI bus. The integrated direct memory access (DMA) engine can transfer data between systems at sustained transfer rates of 80 megabytes per second. Programmed I/O processes can be completed over the link in less than 2 µs, and data can be transferred up to 500 meters over dataBLIZZARD's gigabit fiber-optic transceivers. The dataBLIZZARD product family includes PCI, PCI mezzanine card (PMC), and CompactPCI formats, which will be used in medical imaging, telecommunications, and other industrial applications.
Reliaspan, SBS' Technology's exceptionally fast, high-throughput 64-bit expansion systems for PCI and CompactPCI computers is designed to provide servers with I/O expansion capabilities through the addition of seven PCI or CompactPCI slots. With Reliaspan, a host server can be gracefully scaled to accommodate more PCI or CompactPCI slots, as they are needed. This is especially important for high-availability telecom and computer telephony applications that were once previously limited by the number of cards that the host could support. Historically, SBS designed its own PCI bus interfaces, but for the dataBLIZZARD software and Reliaspan, SBS chose to move into the 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI realm via intellectual property (IP). Using a PLD with a PCI function, SBS entered the market quickly without losing design flexibility. SBS thoroughly evaluated cores offered by six programmable logic vendors and applied the following criteria: performance, flexibility, stability features, documentation, and allowable design re-use. As a result of this evaluation, SBS selected the Altera FLEX 10K family to use in both the dataBLIZZARD and Reliaspan products over the six companies that had working 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI function designs. Only Altera could offer four or more base address registers-an essential feature that allowed SBS to maintain compatibility with the suite of software drivers written for earlier generation products. William Molyneux, vice president of engineering, SBS Connectivity Products, stated that "Reliaspan and the dataBLIZZARD software represent significant breakthroughs for SBS. Both will be shipped in high volumes and will have very long product life cycles." Molyneux also affirmed that "Altera was the sole vendor with bridge experience using its core which substantially lowered our risk. Altera became more of a partner than a vendor. They made every effort to support our developments with their engineering resources."
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