Fiber channel FCS/ATM interworking: design and performance study

The Fibre Channel provides a common efficient transport vehicle for existing channel protocols like intelligent peripheral interface (IPI), small computer system interface (SCSI), and high-performance parallel interface (HIPPI), while offering the characteristics of a new framing type protocol. The main focus driving the design was to find a solution to obtain high throughput using hardware processing and careful protocol relaying architecture between the FCS and ATM. A performance study, considering the protocol relaying architecture and the FCS flow control was performed; the results show that throughput rates approaching line bit rates can be achieved.