HIPPI (
HIgh Performance Parallel Interface) is a
computer busIn computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers.Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical buses with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the...
for the attachment of high speed storage devices to
supercomputerA supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form...
s.
SCSISmall Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces...
and
Fibre ChannelFibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards , an American National Standards Institute –accredited standards...
.
The first HIPPI standard defined a 50-
wireA wire is a single, usually cylindrical, string of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads and to carry electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Standard sizes are determined by various wire gauges...
twisted pairTwisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two conductors are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference from external sources; for instance, electromagnetic radiation from Unshielded Twisted Pair cables, and crosstalk between neighboring pairs.-...
cable, running at 800 Mbit/s (100 MB/s), but was soon upgraded to include a 1600 Mbit/s (200 MB/s) mode running on fibre optic cable. An effort to improve the speed resulted in HIPPI-6400, which was later re-named
GSN (for
Gigabyte System Network) but saw little use due to competing standards.
HIPPI (
HIgh Performance Parallel Interface) is a
computer busIn computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers.Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical buses with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the...
for the attachment of high speed storage devices to
supercomputerA supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form...
s.
SCSISmall Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces...
and
Fibre ChannelFibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards , an American National Standards Institute –accredited standards...
.
The first HIPPI standard defined a 50-
wireA wire is a single, usually cylindrical, string of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads and to carry electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Standard sizes are determined by various wire gauges...
twisted pairTwisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two conductors are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference from external sources; for instance, electromagnetic radiation from Unshielded Twisted Pair cables, and crosstalk between neighboring pairs.-...
cable, running at 800 Mbit/s (100 MB/s), but was soon upgraded to include a 1600 Mbit/s (200 MB/s) mode running on fibre optic cable. An effort to improve the speed resulted in HIPPI-6400, which was later re-named
GSN (for
Gigabyte System Network) but saw little use due to competing standards. GSN had a full-duplex bandwidth of 6400 Mbit/s or 800 MB/s in each direction.
To understand why HIPPI is no longer used, consider that Ultra3 SCSI offers rates of 160 MB/s, and is available at almost any corner computer store. Meanwhile Fibre Channel offered simple interconnect with both HIPPI and SCSI (it can run both protocols) and speeds of up to 400 MB/s on fibre and 100 MB/s on a single pair of twisted pair copper wires.
HIPPI was the first “near-gigabit” (0.8 Gbit/s) (
ANSIThe American National Standards Institute or ANSI is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international...
) standard for network data transmission. It was specifically designed for supercomputers and was never intended for mass market networks such as
EthernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
. Many of the features developed for HIPPI are being integrated into such technologies as
InfiniBandInfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link primarily used in high-performance computing. Its features include quality of service and failover, and it is designed to be scalable...
. What was remarkable about HIPPI is that it came out when Ethernet was still a 10 Mbit/s data link and
SONETSonet may refer to:* Sonet Records, European record label* Synchronous optical networking...
at OC-3 (155 Mbit/s) was considered leading edge technology.