SPI-3 or
System Packet Interface
The System Packet Interface (SPI) family of Interoperability Agreements from the Optical Internetworking Forum specify chip-to-chip, channelized, packet interfaces commonly used in synchronous optical networking and Ethernet applications. A typic ...
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
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, ...
based on their
PL-3 interface to 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) ...
and adopted in June 2000. PL-3 was developed by PMC-Sierra in conjunction with the
SATURN Development Group.
Applications
It was designed to be used in systems that support
OC-48 SONET
Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting dio ...
interfaces . A typical application of SPI-3 is to connect a framer device to a network processor. It has been widely adopted by the high speed networking marketplace.
Technical details
The interface consists of (per direction):
* 32 TTL signals for the data path
* 8 TTL signals for control
* one TTL signal for clock
* 8 TTL signals for optional additional multi-channel status
There are several clocking options. The interface operates around 100 MHz. Implementations of SPI-3 (PL-3) have been produced which allow somewhat higher clock rates. This is important when overhead bytes are added to incoming packets.
SPI-3 in the marketplace
SPI-3 (and
PL-3) was a highly successful interface with many semiconductor devices produced to it.
See also
*
System Packet Interface
The System Packet Interface (SPI) family of Interoperability Agreements from the Optical Internetworking Forum specify chip-to-chip, channelized, packet interfaces commonly used in synchronous optical networking and Ethernet applications. A typic ...
*
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 ...
External links
OIF Interoperability Agreements
Network protocols
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