The SATURN Development Group was an important

industry forum A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association partici ...

that enabled the specification of chip-to-chip interfaces for the communications industry. It was co-founded in 1992 by

PMC-Sierra PMC-Sierra was a global fabless semiconductor company with offices worldwide that developed and sold semiconductor devices into the storage, communications, optical networking, printing, and embedded computing marketplaces. On January 15, 2016, ...

and

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. Several significant specifications were completed through its actions including PL-2,

PL-3 PL-3 or POS-PHY Level 3 is a network protocol. It is the name of the interface that the Optical Internetworking Forum's SPI-3 Interoperability Agreement is based on. It was proposed by PMC-Sierra to the Optical Internetworking Forum and adopted in ...

, and

PL-4 {{about, PL-4, a networking protocol, the PRC missile PL-4, PL-4 (missile) PL-4 or POS-PHY Level 4 was the name of the interface that the interface SPI-4.2 is based on. It was proposed by PMC-Sierra to the Optical Internetworking Forum. The name me ...

. Many important semiconductor devices were developed to these specifications. SATURN was also influential in the specification of the

ATM Forum The ATM Forum was founded in 1991 to be the industry consortium to promote Asynchronous Transfer Mode technology used in telecommunication networks; the founding president and chairman was Fred Sammartino of Sun Microsystems. It was a non-profit in ...

's physical layer "UTOPIA" standards. Initial members included

SynOptics SynOptics Communications was a Santa Clara, California-based early computer network equipment vendor from 1985 until 1994. SynOptics popularized the concept of the modular Ethernet hub and high-speed Ethernet networking over copper twisted-pair a ...

and

Interphase Interphase is the portion of the cell cycle that is not accompanied by visible changes under the microscope, and includes the G1, S and G2 phases. During interphase, the cell grows (G1), replicates its DNA (S) and prepares for mitosis (G2). A c ...

. The first meeting was held in April 1992. By August 1993, the SATURN group had 28 members. After the formation of the

Optical Internetworking Forum The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is a prominent non-profit consortium that was founded in 1998. It promotes the development and deployment of interoperable computer networking products and services through implementation agreements (IAs) fo ...

(OIF), two of the SATURN group's interfaces were successfully adopted by OIF. The

specification became

SPI-3 SPI-3 or System Packet Interface Level 3 is the name of a chip-to-chip, channelized, packet interface widely used in high-speed communications devices. It was proposed by PMC-Sierra based on their PL-3 interface to the Optical Internetworking Foru ...

and the

specification became

SPI-4.2 SPI-4.2 is a version of the System Packet Interface published by the Optical Internetworking Forum. It was designed to be used in systems that support OC-192 SONET interfaces and is sometimes used in 10 Gigabit Ethernet based systems. SPI-4 is an i ...

. The existence of the OIF also eliminated the need for the SATURN Development Group, and it was wound down around 2002.

External links

Early history of SATURN

Light Reading article on PL-4

Light Reading article on PL-5
Technology consortia {{compu-hardware-stub