IEEE 1596-1992

This standard will encompass two levels of interface, defining operation over distances less than 10 m. The physical layer will specify electrical, mechanical, and thermal characteristics of connectors and cards. The logical level will describe the address space, data transfer protocols, cache coherence mechanisms, synchronization primitives, control and status registers, and initialization and error recovery facilities. To define an interface standard for very high performance multiprocessor systems that supports a coherent shared-memory model scalable to systems with up to 64K nodes. This standard is to facilitate assembly of processor, memory, I/O, and bus adaptor cards from multiple vendors into massively parallel systems with throughputs ranging up to more than 1012 operations per second. New IEEE Standard - Inactive-Reserved. The scalable coherent interface (SCI) provides computer-bus-like services but, instead of a bus, uses a collection of fast point-to-point unidirectional links to provide the far higher throughput needed for high-performance multiprocessor systems. SCI supports distributed, shared memory with optional cache coherence for tightly coupled systems, and message-passing for loosely coupled systems. Initial SCI links are defined at 1 Gbyte/s (16-bit parallel) and 1 Gb/s (serial). For applications requiring modular packaging, an interchangeable module is specified along with connector and power. The packets and protocols that implement transactions are defined and their formal specification is provided in the form of computer programs. In addition to the usual read-and-write transactions, SCI supports efficient multiprocessor lock transactions. The distributed cache-coherence protocols are efficient and can recover from an arbitrary number of transmission failures. SCI protocols ensure forward progress despite multiprocessor conflicts (no deadlocks or starvation).