RE: Reply to note by R. Taborek, `Hari Byte vs. Word Striping', dated 26 Nov 1999
I agree with Mr. Widmer.
The only area that I missed in his discussion involves the additional
latency of word-striping versus byte-striping.
I can see where in a backplane implementation, latency is a concern.
However, in the context of a MAC/PHY interface, the media latency will
dominate so heavily in the equation, a word-striped interface's latency
would be of no concern. Given that fact, for a MAC/PHY interface, all of
the benefits he points out should prevail.
Best Regards,
Dan Dove
___________ _________________________________________________________
_________ _/ ___________ Daniel Dove Principal Engineer __
_______ _/ ________ dan_dove@xxxxxx LAN PHY Technology __
_____ _/ ______ Hewlett-Packard Company __
____ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _____ Workgroup Networks Division __
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: widmer@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:widmer@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 1999 8:30 AM
> To: stds-802-3-hssg@xxxxxxxx
> Subject: Reply to note by R. Taborek, `Hari Byte vs. Word Striping',
> dated 26 Nov 1999
>
>
>
>
>
> This is a note in reply to Rich Taborek's note (26 Nov 1999)
> on Byte vs.
> Word striping.
>
> Important Characteristics of the word-striped Hari Proposal
>
>
> A list of reasons, why I believe a word-striped Hari is the
> most attractive
> technical solution for the 10 GbE and Fibre Channel application is
> summarized here:
>
>
>
> 1) The word-striped Hari keeps a 4-byte transport structure intact
> through all levels and configurations of data transmission
> with a uniform
> orientation (parallel/serial). (For idles, skips, and
> initialization, the
> byte-striped proposal uses on the 4 lanes a combination of
> parallel and
> serial formats in a single transport layer resulting in a
> two dimensional
> operating space, which is at the root of many of the difficulties for
> defining suitable `code blocks' and arriving at simple models and
> implementations). The word-striped proposal does not allow
> any parallel
> formats in the serial transmission domain. No deviations from this
> structure are needed for the benefit of synchronization (byte, word,
> frequency compensation) regardless of the number of
> transmission lanes. So
> any protocol which is compatible with the 4-byte wide structure can
> readily be accommodated and others can be made compatible
> without much
> pain, as is the case for 10 GbE framing per Howard Frazier,
> without its
> skip and idle definitions.
>
>
> 2) It has a much wider native skew tolerance making special deskew
> circuits superfluous and saving significant high-speed (baud
> and fractional
> baud intervals) circuit complexity and associated power consumption.
>
> 3) Much simpler, less state-ful logic, much cleaner
> interfaces, and
> more flexibility in mapping link protocols onto the link
> coding, fewer
> special cases of the "can remove X bytes if and only if they
> a re preceded
> Y bytes and followed by Z bytes" variety.
>
> 4) Idle or skip insertion is done independent of the coding, and
> independent of the number of lanes ( An idle is a 4-byte
> word inserted into
> the stream of 4-byte words whenever necessary -- no
> variation/dependency in
> format vs. number of lines in the interface). These
> operations are done in
> the stream of deserialized, word boundary aligned words, in coded or
> uncoded form.
>
> 5) Frame format and coding (except for disparity
> control) independent
> of the number of lanes.
>
> 6) Word sync between every packet with minimum Ethernet IPG.
>
> 7) Much greater flexibility in control sequences --
> don't run out of
> control characters, since link control is done with control
> words instead
> of a single K character.
>
> 8) Almost all the logic is done on a per-word basis,
> rather than a
> per-byte basis. -- Simpler logic clocking.
>
> 9) It's very intuitive, and easier to describe, construct, and
> simulate than the per-byte interfaces.
>
> 10) Doing line de-crossing (i.e. to get lines 0-3 to
> connect to lines
> 3-0 in mirrored order, with the de-crossing done inside the
> chips) is
> trivially easy, adds 0 ns of extra latency, and adds a very few extra
> gates. Line de-crossing on the chip can save significant
> area on the card
> in complex systems.
>
> Detailed Reply to your note `Hari Byte vs. Word Striping',
> dated 26 Nov
> 1999
>
> See the web sites below for a full reply to Mr. Taborek's long note,
> including some additional foils on "staggered word striping"
> as mentioned
> verbally by Dr. Ritter at the Kauai meeting. (The files were
> too large as
> formatted to be reflected; they do NOT have the new worm !)
>
> The two files are located at the following URLs:-
>
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/3/10G_study/public/email_attach/wordstrip
e.pdf
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/3/10G_study/public/email_attach/word_stag
gered.pdf
Albert Widmer Phone: 914 945-2047 Email:
widmer@xxxxxxxxxx
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0218