Fibre Channel Industry Association Advances 32Gb FC Roadmap

On the eve of the Gartner Data Center Conference December 9 – 12 in Las Vegas, NE, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced the INCITS T11 standards committee has recently completed the Fibre Channel Physical Interface – sixth generation (FC-PI-6) industry standard for specifying 32Gb FC and will forward it to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for publication in the first quarter of 2014.

The 2013 completion marks a milestone on FCIA’s Speed Roadmap for 32Gb FC, and signals continued innovation for data centers requiring a fast, scalable and reliable storage network, based on the proven tried and true Fibre Channel storage network technology.

“The FCIA is helping extend the FC protocol through close cooperation with the T11 standards committee’s innovation in multiple areas,” said Skip Jones, FCIA Chairman “Many requirements that are addressed are based on real end user experience and input, leading to the development of new features and enhancements. By listening to customer’s needs, the 32Gb FC has been developed, representing the fastest single-lane serial transmission speed of any copper or optical storage interconnect in history.”

The Fibre Channel PI-6 standard specification includes:

One single fibre optic or electrical copper lane of cabled interconnect for better port density real estate and power reduction than multi-lane interconnect technologies
64/66b ENDEC transcoding that ensures reliable error-free, packet-loss free data transfers at full 32Gbps bandwidth utilization
The ability to service port-to-port distances up to 100 meters of intra-data center connectivity on OM4 laser optimized multi-mode optical fibre cable, up to six meters of intra-data center connectivity on electrical copper cable and up to 10,000 meters of long-distance inter-data center connectivity on laser optimized single-mode optical fibre cable At 32Gb, FC doubles the data rate of the current 16G FC standard.

Vendor solutions are expected in 2015/2016.

Read also:
Fibre Channel Roadmap
64Gb throughput in 2012, 128Gb in 2015 ‚ and 1Tb in 2024