XIO is usually used in a star topology, using a routerASIC called Crossbow (Xbow) to connect up to eight fully symmetrical devices in a system (one of them is usually the memory controller / CPU bridge, called HEART in Octane or Hub in Origin). Other devices known to have XIO interfaces are:
BRIDGE: XIO to PCI-64 bridge (Octane, Origin)
XBRIDGE: XIO to PCI-X bridge (Altix)
HQ4: command processor of ImpactSR cards (Octane)
KTOWN: frontend for InfiniteReality2 cards (Onyx, Origin variation)
The XIO employs two source-synchronous channels (one in each direction), each 8 or 16 bits wide. They are clocked at 400MHz to achieve peak rates of 800MB/s (i.e. in megabytes). Each of the devices can utilize the full bandwidth, as the XBow router prevents collisions by being able to route between any two points.
Transfer is organized into micropackets. These contain a total of 128 bits of data and 32 bits of control. The control information encapsulates an 8 bit sideband (used by higher layers for framing), sequence numbers (for go-back-n link-layer retransmissions) and check bits (CRC-16).
It is probable that XIO uses STL (which SGI likes to call SGI transistor logic) low-voltage single-ended I/O standard.[1] CrossTown is a version of XIO utilizing PECL for differential I/O standard (like NUMAlink) for longer connections.
Higher-level encapsulation differs from NUMAlink (like used to connect HUB chips in Origin-series machines). It is well suited for short memory transactions.[citation needed]
XIO uses very delicate compression connectors, which should be handled with extreme care.[2]
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California in November 1981 by Jim Clark, its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.
PCI Express, officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common motherboard interface for personal computers' graphics cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware connections. PCIe has numerous improvements over the older standards, including higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more detailed error detection and reporting mechanism, and native hot-swap functionality. More recent revisions of the PCIe standard provide hardware support for I/O virtualization.
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Octane series of IRIX workstations was developed and sold by SGI in the 2000s. Octane and Octane2 are two-way multiprocessing-capable workstations, originally based on the MIPS Technologies R10000 microprocessor. Newer Octanes are based on the R12000 and R14000. The Octane2 has four improvements: a revised power supply, system board, and Xbow ASIC. The Octane2 has VPro graphics and supports all the VPro cards. Later revisions of the Octane include some of the improvements introduced in the Octane2. The codenames for the Octane and Octane2 are "Racer" and "Speedracer" respectively.
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The SGI Tezro is a series of high-end computer workstations sold by SGI from 2003 until 2006. Using MIPS CPUs and running IRIX, it is the immediate successor to the SGI Octane line. The systems were produced in both rack-mount and tower versions, and the series was released in June 2003 with a list price of US$20,500. The Tezro was released alongside the SGI Onyx4 and rack-mountable Tezros share many components with it, including plastic skins. The rack-mounted Tezros are functionally very similar to an Infinite Performance-equipped SGI Onyx350. Tezro marked the return of the original cube logo to SGI machines.
The O2 was an entry-level Unix workstation introduced in 1996 by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to replace their earlier Indy series. Like the Indy, the O2 used a single MIPS microprocessor and was intended to be used mainly for multimedia. Its larger counterpart was the SGI Octane. The O2 was SGI's last attempt at a low-end workstation.
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The SGI Origin 350 is a mid-range server computer developed and manufactured by SGI introduced in 2003. Their discontinuation in December 2006 brought to a close almost two decades of MIPS and IRIX computing.
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GIO is a computer bus standard developed by SGI and used in a variety of their products in the 1990s as their primary expansion system. GIO was similar in concept to competing standards such as NuBus or (later) PCI, but saw little use outside SGI and severely limited the devices available on their platform as a result. Most devices using GIO were SGI's own graphics cards, although a number of cards supporting high-speed data access such as Fibre Channel and FDDI were available from third parties. Later SGI machines use the XIO bus, which is laid out as a computer network as opposed to a bus.
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The SGI Origin 200, code named Speedo, was an entry-level server computer developed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in October 1996 to accompany their mid-range and high-end Origin 2000. It is based on the same architecture as the Origin 2000 but has an unrelated hardware implementation. At the time of introduction, these systems ran the IRIX 6.4, and later, the IRIX 6.5 operating systems. The Origin 200 was discontinued on 30 June 2002.
The Origin 3000 and the Onyx 3000 is a family of mid-range and high-end computers developed and manufactured by SGI. The Origin 3000 is a server, and the Onyx 3000 is a visualization system. Both systems were introduced in July 2000 to succeed the Origin 2000 and the Onyx2 respectively. These systems ran the IRIX 6.5 Advanced Server Environment operating system. Entry-level variants of these systems based on the same architecture but with a different hardware implementation are known as the Origin 300 and Onyx 300. The Origin 3000 was succeeded by the Altix 3000 in 2004 and the last model was discontinued on 29 December 2006, while the Onyx 3000 was succeeded by the Onyx4 and the Itanium-based Prism in 2004 and the last model was discontinued on 25 March 2005.
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Since 1985, many processors implementing some version of the MIPS architecture have been designed and used widely.
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