PCI express and advanced switching: evolutionary path to building next generation interconnects

With processor and memory technologies pushing the performance limit, the bottleneck is clearly shifting towards the system interconnect. Any solution that addresses the PCI bus-based interconnect, which has serious scalability problems, must also protect the huge legacy infrastructure. PCI Express provides such an evolutionary approach and allows a smooth migration towards building a highly scalable next generation interconnect. Advanced switching further boosts the capabilities of PCI Express by allowing a rich application space to be covered that includes multiprocessing and peer-to-peer communication. Indeed, the synergy between PCI Express and advanced switching permits the adoption of an evolutionary yet revolutionary approach for building the interconnect of the future.