Scalable Coherent Interconnect
Group that supports the standard
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| Abbreviation | SCIzzL |
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| Formation | 1996 |
| Type | Non-profit |
| Website | www |
The Scalable Coherent Interface or Scalable Coherent Interconnect (SCI), was a high-speed interconnect standard for shared memory multiprocessing and message passing used in the 1990s. The goal was to scale well, provide system-wide memory coherence and a simple interface; i.e. a standard to replace buses in multiprocessor systems without the inherent scalability and performance limitations of buses. The IEEE Std 1596-1992, IEEE Standard for Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) was approved by the IEEE standards board on March 19, 1992.
Soon after the Fastbus (IEEE 960) follow-on Futurebus (IEEE 896) project in 1987, some engineers predicted it would already be too slow for the high performance computing marketplace by the time it would be released in the early 1990s. In response, a "Superbus" study group was formed in November 1987. Another working group of the standards association of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) spun off to form a standard targeted at this market in July 1988. It was essentially a subset of Futurebus features that could be easily implemented at high speed, along with minor additions to make it easier to connect to other systems, such as VMEbus. Most of the developers had their background from high-speed computer buses. Representatives from companies in the computer industry and research community included Amdahl, Apple Computer, BB&N, Hewlett-Packard, CERN, Dolphin Server Technology, Cray Research, Sequent, AT&T, Digital Equipment Corporation, McDonnell Douglas, National Semiconductor, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, Unisys, University of Oslo, University of Wisconsin.
The original intent was a single standard for all buses in the computer. The working group soon came up with the idea of using point-to-point communication in the form of insertion rings. This avoided the lumped capacitance, limited physical length/speed of light problems and stub reflections in addition to allowing parallel transactions. The use of insertion rings is credited to Manolis Katevenis who suggested it at one of the early meetings of the working group. The working group for developing the standard was led by David B. Gustavson (chair) and David V. James (Vice Chair).
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