pauls@nsc.nsc.com (Paul Sweazey) (10/06/87)
This is an invitation to participate in the
Superbus Study Group,
an activity of the IEEE Computer Society under the Microprocessor
Standards Committee.
The charter of the Superbus Study Group is to determine the feasibility
of establishing an IEEE standard backplane bus for high-end systems of
the 1990's with a sustained usable data bandwidth on the order of
ONE GIGABYTE PER SECOND. To acheive this goal in a timely manner requires
that the scope of the project be wisely narrowed. Given the initial
assumption that the order of precedence is first speed, then flexibility,
then cost, the purpose of the first meetings of the Superbus Study Group
is to reach a consensus about the nature of that balance and how it will
affect the usefulness of the standard, and the time it will take to develop
it.
Expertise is sought to intelligently address and narrow the scope of the
standard in the following areas:
--Mechanical/connector technology
--Electrical technology (ECL, BTL, other)
--Handshake protocol (Synchronous, semi-sync, async, compelled, etc.)
--Information fields (Address, data, ECC, parity, PID, stride, tag, etc.)
--Transaction classes (master/slave, 3 party, multislave, split transaction)
--Arbitration services (Distributed or centralized, dynamic, scheduled)
--Robustness (Error handling, retry, fault tolerance, live insertion)
--Technology dependence (Specified performance ceiling/floor, VLSI support)
--User cost
--IEEE standard development timetable
The first scheduled Superbus Study Group meeting is:
Monday, November 9, 1987
9:00am to 4:00pm
National Semiconductor Corporation
2900 Semiconductor Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95052
USA
Host: Paul Sweazey, 408-721-5860
Other hosts are solicited for meetings on the east coast, Europe, and
elsewhere to assure a broad base of input and participation. If you are
interested in participating in this effort, please write to me (mail
stop D3678) at the above address, or respond via email, or telephone.
Give your name, mailing address, and telephone number and indicate that
you are interested in "Superbus", and state if you are able to attend
the Santa Clara meeting or if you would participate in a meeting in your
geographical region.
IEEE membership is not required to participate.
Paul Sweazey, M/S D3678
National Semiconductor Corporation
2900 Semiconductor Drive, PO Box 58090
Santa Clara, CA 95052 Work: 408-721-5860
{decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,sun,pyramid,amdahl}!nsc!pauls