Tensilica and Design IP Blogs

Steve Brown
28 Apr 2016

High Speed East-West Interconnect at the Open Server Summit

This year’s Open Server Summit served up plates full of data…if it wasn’t obvious, there’s more data coming. And then more for dessert. So much so that the challenges seem insurmountable to some. Others see huge opportunities, or a need, to disrupt the server market. Or to change the architecture of these systems to better handle new demands.

According to Cisco Systems, annual datacenter traffic is expected to reach 6.6 Zettabytes (billion terabytes) by the end of 2016. Much of this traffic stems from mobile. Through 2019, Cisco estimates that mobile video will generate much of the mobile data traffic growth; by 2019, the mobile network will process 24.3 exabytes (million terabytes) of data per month, with 17.4 exabytes of this being video content1.

Figure 1: Growth in Data Traffic

This is leading to changes in strategies as the rapid growth in data overtakes the ability of datacenters to scale. At the Open Server Summit they discussed How to Install 5,000 Servers Per Day. Another trend being discussed is Changing Server/Storage Architecture to optimize localized traffic speeds, taking advantage of proximity and higher speed SerDes interfaces for specific types of data analytics.

Figure 2: Increases in SerDes Speeds

The challenge for equipment providers is the fluidity of the architecture. The speeds are changing rapidly, new protocols are emerging, PCIe 4.0 isn’t a fully released standard with a compliance program.

Cadence was at the event, with a demonstration of our 16Gbps high speed SerDes IP, running both PCIe 4.0 and 10G-KR on different lanes. As a multi-protocol, multi-link PHY, it is enabling customers to participate in these trends, while future-proofing against changes in protocols of choice: it also supports USB 3.1, SATA 3.1, XAUI/RXAUI, and Q/SGMII.

For those of you that missed the event, the proceedings are now available here.

Footnotes:

1 Source: Cisco Systems, http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white_paper_c11-520862.html

 

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