Contributed article that appeared in December 2002 issue of Computer Technology Review
by: Harry Mason, LSI Logic
The move to serially connected storage devices, primarily disk drives, is irrefutable. While today’s installed base is relatively small and consists of a few million Fibre Channel drives, new interfaces that service a greater percentage of the storage market promises to change all of that. The number of serially connected storage devices deployed over the next four years could be well in excess of 100million drives!
VLSI integration and the advances of high-speed serial transceiver technology are rapidly driving the industry toward these versatile connection schemes. The advantages of these serial connections are many: smaller form factors, more flexible and thinner cabling, less weight, more predictable/reliable signaling mechanisms, and topologies that promise to scale with the needs of the end-users.