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Sun Platform technologyFrom the beginning, Sun Microsystems based our product strategy on hardware and software standards. These include Berkeley UNIX®, TCP/IP, Ethernet, and also various I/O standards. Supporting standards-based I/O technologies aligns third-party products with Sun systems. In-depth technical information on Solaris drivers and I/O architectures can be found at the Sun developer website and at the Driver Development for Solaris platforms website. If you are an independent hardware vendor (IHV) interested in supporting the Solaris operating environment or I/O technologies on Sun systems, please contact the Sun I/O Technologies and Solutions group with any of your questions. PCIPeripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a high-performance 32-bit or 64-bit local bus technology. PCI is now an industry-wide standard for attaching I/O peripherals, such as network interface cards and host bus adapters, to workstations, and servers. The PCI specifications are developed by the members of the PCI Special Interest Group. Since the launch of the UltraSparc based systems, Sun has offered PCI based systems. Current Sun systems support the following PCI cards (not all variations are available on all systems).
PCI-XPCI-X, short for PCI Extended, is an enhanced PCI bus. PCI-X is backward compatible with existing PCI cards. PCI-X 1.0 defines PCI-X 66 and PCI-X 133 that can transfer data up to 1 GBps for a 64-bit device. PCI-X 2.0 added two new speeds: PCI-X 266 and PCI-X 533, offering up to 4.3 gigabytes per second of bandwidth.
Current Sun systems support PCI-X up to 133Mhz and adher to PCI-X Rev 1.0b Spec. More information is available at the PCI Special Interest Group http://www.pcisig.com/ PCI-ExpressPCI-Express is an I/O interconnect bus standard that expands on and doubles the data transfer rates of original PCI. PCI Express is a two-way, serial connection that carries data in packets along two pairs of point-to-point data lanes, compared to the single parallel data bus of traditional PCI that routes data at a set rate. Initial bit rates for PCI Express reach 2.5Gb/s or 250MB/s per lane direction, with speeds expected to increase with advances in silicon technology up to possibly around 10Gb/s in each direction. PCI Express supports for multiple interconnect widths via 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32 lane configurations aggregated to match application bandwidth needs. PCI Express was developed so that high-speed interconnects such as 1394b, USB2.0, Infiniband and Gigabit Ethernet would have an I/O architecture suitable for their transfer high speeds.
Hot-PlugHot-plug and hot-swap refer to mechanical methods of removing peripheral cards without taking down the system into which they are plugged. Hot-plug cards can be removed after suspending operation of the bus, but without rebooting or turning the power off. Hot-swap cards can be removed without suspending operation of the bus. Support for hot-plugging PCI cards is available on specific Sun systems, i.e., Sun Fire Midframe servers and Sun Fire 880 and Sun Fire V890. Compact PCI - cPCIWhile Compact PCI is electrically the same as PCI, the cards are mechanically more rugged. Available in both 3U and 6U form factors, Compact PCI cards resemble VME peripherals. Today, Compact PCI solutions are available from Sun Microelectronics, and Compact PCI solutions might be used in selected future server products. More information about cPCI can be found at the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group website. USB and USB2.0Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a local serial bus technology. Sun currently supports USB1.1 on most of the current workstations and servers, including the Sun Blade workstation products and the Sun Ray terminals. Support for the newer Hi-Speed USB2.0 specification will be available soon on specific products. An early access USB driver development kit is available for download from the Driver Development website. Developers can locate the USB DDK at http://developers.sun.com/solaris/developer/support/driver/usb.html website. Information about the USB specifications and products can be found at the USB Implementers Forum website. IEEE 1394IEEE 1394 is an industry-wide, standard interconnect that enables you to connect peripherals to a system just as you connect televisions, video cassette recorders, compact disc players, tuners, and amplifiers. Based on Apple's FireWire, IEEE 1394 specifies a hot-plug socket capable of sending and receiving up to 400 Mbytes of data per second, which is enough bandwidth to send full digital video and audio signals between components. Based on an isochronous protocol that guarantees the synchronization of separate audio and video signals, IEEE 1394 enables digital cameras, sound systems, telephones, scanners, disk drives, printers, and other devices to be shared among computer systems, and linked to each other with a simple six-wire plug like that used in video games. Sun supports IEEE 1394 on Sun Blade workstations. Please contact the Sun I/O Technologies & Solutions group if you are interested in providing IEEE 1394 Solaris solutions. Information about IEEE 1394 technology is available from the 1394 Trade Association. InfiniBandTMInfiniBand Architecture defines a new interconnect technology for servers that changes the way data centers will be built, deployed and managed. By creating a unified fabric, InfiniBand takes I/O outside of the box and provides a mechanism to share I/O interconnects among many servers. InfiniBand does not eliminate the need for other interconnect technologies. Instead, it creates a more efficient way to connect storage and communications networks and server clusters together, while delivering an I/O infrastructure that will produce the efficiency, reliability and scalability that data centers demand. See the Infiniband Trade Associations's web site at http://www.infinibandta.org for Infiniband history and specifications. InfiniBand at SunSun is developing systems which will utilize the InfiniBand architecture primarily for server interconnection, but other uses are envisaged as the technology becomes more accepted by the marketplace. The core support for InfiniBand is already built in to Solaris 10, as well as Linux, and development continues to provide increasing levels of support in subsequent Solaris updates. Sun is already partnering with several InfiniBand vendors to enable large, high-performance solutions for their mutual customers. This support in Solaris 10 1/06 release. See the list of products supported in the InfiniBand section of the Solaris Ready site. See Infiniband product pages . IEEE 1275 Open FirmwareIEEE 1275 is the industry standard for Open Firmware, a programmable vendor-independent firmware standard that increases the intelligence of I/O peripherals. Having promoted many of the plug and play features incorporated into PCI 2.1, IEEE 1275 enables I/O peripherals to work with any system regardless of the processor. Add-on board diagnostics and self-test routines lower service and integration costs, and because this firmware standard is programmable, peripherals that embody this standard can be changed to work with new processors when they become available. Open Firmware is an architecture for the firmware that controls a computer before the operating system has begun execution. The Open Firmware architecture is defined by IEEE Standard 1275-1994, Standard for Boot (Initialization Configuration) Firmware. Open Firmware provides the advantages of time-to-market and interoperability over proprietary firmware solutions. Sun Microsystems endorses and recommends the use of Open Firmware on all I/O peripherals. ATAPIATAPI is the real name of the CD-ROM (EIDE CD-ROM) and tape (ATAPI tape or EIDE tape) interface. This interface was originally developed by a groupof CD-ROM companies with lots of help. ATAPI was a specification published by the Small Form Factor (SFF) committee. The correct documents to use for ATAPI are ATA/ATAPI-4 (or higher) and SCSI MMC or MMC-2. ATAPI introduced a new command execution protocol for use on the ATA interface so that these new CD-ROM and tape drives could, in theory, be on the same ATA cable with an ATA hard disk drive. The ATAPI Packet command, command code A0H, is used to send what looks like a CDB across the ATA interface. The actual data transfer to the device media is done using the ATA PIO or DMA protocols. An IDE, EIDE, FASTATA or ULTRA ATA device is really an ATAPI device and all such devices are generally compatible with each other and can be used in the same system and even on the same ATA cable. Of course there are exceptions. Some devices that don't conform to the ATA or ATA/ATAPI standards. SATASerial ATA is the next-generation internal storage interconnect based on
Serial bus architecture. It has evolved from the older parallel ATA
technology based on parallel bus that has been used as primary storage
interconnect connecting a host system to its peripherals such as
hard-drives, optical drives,removable storage devices etc. But, the
parallel bus presents limitations for continued speed enhancements. The
serial bus architecture is overcomes the electrical constraints of the
parallel ATA bus and scales better for speed. Serial ATA will be
introduced at 150Mbytes/sec, with a road map already planned to
600Mbytes/sec.
SCSISCSI stands for Small Computer Systems Interface. It's a standard for
connecting peripherals to your computer via a standard hardware
interface. SCSI uses standard SCSI commands and data packets to move
data across the SCSI bus. The SCSI standard can be divided into SCSI (SCSI1)
and SCSI2 (SCSI wide and SCSI wide and fast). SCSI2 is the most recent
version of the SCSI command specification and allows for scanners, hard disk
drives, CD-ROM players, tapes [and many other devices] to connect.
Cable widths have changed over the years to allow wider data path,
( 68 pin P cable) to send the data. This allows for double or quadruple
speed over the SCSI-bus. The Bus clock rate has also increased over the
last few years.
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