PCI express and advanced switching: evolutionary path to building next generation interconnects
David R. Mayhew, V. Krishnan · 2004
With processor and memory technologies pushing the performance limit, the bottleneck is clearly shifting towards the system interconnect. Any solution that addresses the PCI bus-based interconnect, which has serious scalability problems, must also protect the huge legacy infrastructure. PCI Express provides such an evolutionary approach and allows a smooth migration towards building a highly scalable next generation interconnect. Advanced switching further boosts the capabilities of PCI Express by allowing a rich application space to be covered that includes multiprocessing and peer-to-peer communication. Indeed, the synergy between PCI Express and advanced switching permits the adoption of an evolutionary yet revolutionary approach for building the interconnect of the future.