16GB FIBRE CHANNEL
FCIA
16
Twice as fast is more than two times better
Fibre Channel, the dominant storage networking technology, is developing a new round of products to re-invigorate Fibre Channel. 16 Gigabit/second Fibre Channel (16GFC) products will be released in 2011 and a loyal base of users will migrate to the next generation of speed. 16GFC is backward compatible with earlier Fibre Channel speeds and will continue to use SFP+ optical modules so that Fibre Channel has economies of scale unlike any other multi-Gigabit/second technology. By Scott Kipp, Fibre Channel Industry Association, Brocade.
Fibre Channel moves to a new speed to help users While Fibre Channel is often considered a niche market, the facts speak differently for multi-gigabit technologies. According to Dell’Oro, 10 Gigabit Ethernet sold about 2.1 million (2.1M) switch ports in 2009 while Fibre Channel sold 5.8M switch ports.
The physical layer of Fibre
Channel has more economies of scale than 10GbE because Fibre Channel only uses the SFP+ form factor while 10GbE uses the XENPAK, X2, XFP and SFP+ form factors. Over 95% of Fibre Channel links are within the data center over multimode fiber while 10GbE operates over a variety of distances and single-mode fiber to fracture the 10GbE physical market into multiple pieces. While 3.5M 8GFC switch ports shipped in 2009, Dell’Oro forecasts 5.7M 8GFC switch ports in 2010.
technology of Fibre Channel is growing by leaps and bounds and set to leapfrog 10GbE technologies in terms of cost, speed and capabilities.
With the release of a new generation of 16GFC ASICs and products, Fibre Channel will continue its dominance in storage networking.
16GFC doubles the data
Speed Name
1GFC 2GFC 4GFC 8GFC
10GFC 16GFC
Throughput (MB/sec)
100 200 400 800
1200 1600
Table 1: Fibre Channel Speed Characteristics WIN 2010
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM
Line Rate (Gbps)
1.0625 2.125 4.25 8.5
10.53 14.025 The niche
The benefits of any faster technology are easy to see. Data transfers are faster, fewer links are needed to accomplish the same task, fewer devices need to be managed and less power is consumed when 16GFC is used instead of 10GbE, 8GFC or 4GFC. Several technology advances are pushing up bandwidth demands in SANs that include application growth, server virtualization, multi-core processors, PCI Express 3.0, increased memory and solid state disks. 16GFC is keeping pace with other technology advances in the data center.
16GFC should be applied where high bandwidth is needed. Applications where bandwidth demands are high include storage array migration, disaster recovery, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and inter-switch links (ISLs).
place that new speeds are usually needed in SANs is in ISLs in the core of the network and between data centers.
Encoding
8b/10b 8b/10b 8b/10b 8b/10b
64b/66b 64b/66b
Retimers in the module
No No No No
Yes Yes
Transmitter Training
No No No No No
Yes
throughput of 8GFC links from 800 MegaBytes/second (MBps) to 1,600 MBps with 16GFC. From Host Bus Adapters (HBA) to switches, 16GFC will enable higher performance with lower power consumption per bit over previous generations of technology. 16GFC delivers the performance required by today’s leading applications.
The first
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