FCIA 2020 Fibre Channel Roadmap

By Craig Carlson, FCIA board member, senior technologist, Marvell Semiconductor Inc., and Rupin Mohan, FCIA board member, director R&D, CTO, HPE storage networking

When companies invest in a technology, they want to know that they will get a return on their investment for years to come. FC has had an accurate roadmap for over a decade, showing the past, present and future of the FC physical layer. The interface has been progressing since 1996 by doubling the data rate (FC) every few years and the roadmap shows the progression will continue far into the future.

The ANSI INCITS T11.2 Task Group (T11.2), the standards body that defines FC speeds, finished 64Gb FC in 2018. 64GFC runs 9% faster than 50GbE and has been defined for a Bit Error Ratio (BER) of 1E-15 that is 1,000 v better than Ethernet that has a 1W-12 BER. 64GFC products are expected to ship in 2020/2021. T11.2 is also working on 128Gb FC that runs 5% faster than 100GbE. 128Gb FC is expected to be completed in 2021 with products shipping in 2022. The FC physical layer will continue to leverage the developments in the Ethernet physical layer. In 2020, FCIA (Fibre Channel Industry Association) has updated the FC roadmap as part of itq regular yearly cadence.

An accurate roadmap provides a reliable guide for suppliers, manufacturers and distributors of products to plan their product development and release cycles. The features and timing of the technology migration reflected in the roadmap are based on open standards that are technically stable and complete. Some technology developments outlined in reliable roadmaps are required building blocks for product development. For example, lasers in optical modules need to be developed before transceiver modules used in a switch or HBA. With a roadmap and standards, multiple companies can develop products in parallel that will eventually interoperate when they reach the market.

FCIA‘s Roadmap Committee produces the FCIA Speedmap in concert with T11.2. The resulting roadmap is the refined product of an intense iterative process that pinpoints highly attractive market propositions balanced with sound engineering feasibility. It becomes the official FCIA Speedmap and MRDs (Marketing Requirement Documents) for T11.2’s map of speeds and timelines. The MRDs define sets of features and benefits that are not only feasible within the Speedmap timelines, but also result in actual products delivered in the prescribed timeframe that realize massive market success.

FCIA’s roadmap has helped the industry see the future of FC for over 15 years. FC has always had a clear road ahead where the link speeds double every 3-4 years when the speeds can be cost-effectively doubled. Figure 1 shows the history of FC speeds and future speeds after 2020.

Figure 1: FC Roadmap
Click to enlarge

It also shows how FC initially used only serial speeds for the earlier gens. These serial speeds have used the venerable Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) module. The sixth gen of FC, known as Gen6 FC, uses the SFP28 (an SFP that runs at 28Gb/s) for 32Gb FC as well as the Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable (QSFP28) module for 128GFC. T11.2 finished the seventh gen of FC speeds in 2019 that will continue this tradition with 64Gb FC in an SFP and 256Gb FC in a QSFP. The project for the eighth gen of FC that supports 128Gb FC in the SFP i underway in 2020 and is keeping pace with 100GbE in an SFP module.

The FC roadmap doesn’t stop there. In Figure 1, the roadmap extends to Terabit FC (1TFC) – that’s almost 1,000Gb of data per second. Following the 1X/4X lane paradigm, FC and Ethernet plan to double individual lane speeds repeatedly over the next decade. With FC’s focus on storage in the data center, FC will continue to standardize speeds at approximately the same time as Ethernet, but FC speeds will be 5% faster. While FC doubled speeds from 28Gb/s to 56Gb/s, Ethernet plans to double 25Gb/s to 50Gb/s. The trend will continue with FC lanes doubling to 112Gb/s and then 224Gb/s. When 4 lanes of these speeds are aggregated, the combined speeds will deliver almost a terabit/second of data for what will be known as Terabit FC (1TFC).

While FC standards are completed in advance of products being released by at least a year, some Ethernet products are released before the Ethernet standard is ratified. This means that Ethernet products of similar speeds are released at about the same time as similar speed FC products. For example, 50GbE products running at 53.125Gb/s and 64Gb FC products running at 57.8Gb/s are both expected to be widely available in 2020 for the first time. High-speed Ethernet and FC products are basically running on similar physical layers.

The physical layers of FC and Ethernet are marching at a similar pace now. While FC has continuously doubled speeds from gen to gen, Ethernet used to grow by a factor of 10 until 40GbE came along. 40GbE, which is based on 4 lanes of 10G technology, broke the 10x paradigm and opened the door to more moderate steps in speed. Similar to technology progressions like Moore’s Law and storage capacity, doubling of lane rates is the new norm. Individual lanes can then be grouped together to form new speeds. While Ethernet continues to use up to 16 lanes for 400GbE router applications, only 1x and 4x lanes are shown in the FC roadmap because these are the only relevant speeds for SANs.

FC roadmap has been printed as physical, folding roadmap and electronic version can be downloaded.

The backside of the map shows how FC is used in data centers around to world to store and replicate data. FC continues to grow and provide the most cost-effective and reliable links for SANs.

Besides the roadmap, the FCIA Roadmap subcommittee develops the MRD for new speeds like 128Gb FC. Important elements defined in the MRD include backward compatibility with previous speeds. For instance, just like 1/2/8/16Gb FC, and 32Gb FC edge connectivity, 64Gb FC and 128Gb FC are required to be backward compatible at least two gens. These speeds are auto-negotiated with no user intervention required, – i.e., 32Gb FC ports will automatically run at 8Gb FC and 16Gb FC, while 64Gb FC will automatically run at 32Gb FC and 16GFC. 128Gb FC continues FC’s long history of ensuring total backward compatibility by also operating at 32Gb FC or 64Gb FC. This important level of backward compatibility has been and will continue to be a major benefit in FC’s continued success.

⁽¹⁾ At the time of this article, the exact 128Gb FC design parameters have not been finalized and may change.