Continuous speed and bandwidth improvements of Fibre Channel drives storage innovation for next-generation data center architectures

SAN FRANCISCO, December 3, 2013– On the dawn of the Gartner Data Center Conference December 9 – 12 in Las Vegas, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) today announced the INCITS T11 standards committee has recently completed the Fibre Channel Physical Interface – sixth generation (FC-PI-6) industry standard for specifying 32 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel and will forward it to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for publication in the first quarter of 2014. The 2013 completion marks a successful milestone on FCIA’s Speed Roadmap for 32 Gbps Fibre Channel, 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 Fibre Channel 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 32 Gbps Fibre Channel standard 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 32 Gbps, Fibre Channel doubles the data rate of the current 16G Fibre Channel standard. Vendor solutions are expected in 2015/2016

About FCIA
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a non-profit international organization whose sole purpose is to act as the independent technology and marketing voice of the Fibre Channel industry. We are committed to helping member organizations promote and position Fibre Channel, and to providing a focal point for Fibre Channel information, standards advocacy, and education.

FCIA members include manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals, and end users. Our member-led working groups and committees focus on creating and championing the Fibre Channel technology roadmaps, targeting applications that include data storage, video, networking, and storage area network (SAN) management. For more info, go to https://fibrechannel.org

Media Contact:
Linda Capcara
TechTHiNQ
linda.capcara@techthinq.com
480-229-7090

Organization Contact:
Chris Lyon
FCIA Executive Director
CLyon@FibreChannel.org

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