RapidIO Generation X+1

By Tom Cox, RapidIO Trade Association

OEM, chip, and board producers are all helping develop the RapidIO community’s future plans. The bottleneck in systems is forever moving, presenting challenges to designers working on a wide range of applications. One day it may be a processor’s raw ability to do real-time computing, hence systems designers must add multicores, FPGA-based accelerators, or DSP farms. The next day, it may be the interconnect that limits performance, hence designers must move from RapidIO Gen 1 to Gen 2. In this ever changing competitive challenge, we must constantly plan for applications and requirements that do not even exist today.

Planning for the uncharted future needs of complex systems seems like an impossible job. Understanding application requirements and end user needs is a daunting task on its own. Who knows what may be demanded from systems in a fast-changing world? The future of technology advances is more predictable since we have a long history to work from and knowledge of current R&D work that is likely to come to fruition.  However, there is still considerable uncertainty in predicting the technology, capabilities, and affordability of processors, memory, form factors, interconnects, I/O, storage, and other components.  

Although individual approaches to planning successful applications of new technology differ greatly, the collaboration of the entire ecosystem is essential. All players must fully participate in the technology roadmap to craft a common point from which to interwork.  The RapidIO community brings together a unique collaboration of leaders in OEM systems, DSPs and processors, interconnect, and FPGAs.  This group of motivated experts has spent the past ten years focused on the needs of embedded OEM applications and has developed a successful roadmap.

The proof is in the fact that RapidIO 1.3 with 10G data capabilities is shipping today in large volumes. It dominates shipping LTE basestations and is common in medical and military equipment, and in high end data centers. Gen2, with its 20G traffic managed data, is now prototyping, qualifying, and entering production to satisfy the evolving needs of advanced LTE systems, video servers, and military and aerospace applications.

The collective knowledge of the community and its history of innovative application of new technology are now being applied to RapidIO’s third generation. Teams are plotting the roadmap that will continue to leverage the strong ecosystem of embedded market suppliers. We must now drive AdvancedTCA form factors to the next level of reliable, high performance applications with 40G or even 100G capabilities matched to order of magnitude improvements in multicore processors and DSPs. The guidance and expert knowledge of world leaders in OEM systems is critical, as the competitive challenge to meet the needs of these complex systems will mean their success or failure. Meeting these new requirements will be even more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming than previous efforts, but the process will also spotlight the advantages of RapidIO over competing approaches. 

Tom Cox is Executive Director of the RapidIO Trade Association. You can reach him at tom.cox@rapidio.org.