Annual Report for: T11

Title of NCITS Subgroup: Technical Committee for Device Level Interfaces

• TC & TG Officers
• Membership in T11, T11.1, T11.2, T11.3 & T11.4
• Liaison Activities
• Administrative Matters of Note
• Procedural Matters of Note
• Recommendations
• Market Impact
• Anticipated Projects
• Future Trends

T11 is responsible for the Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI), High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI) and Fibre Channel (FC) families of standards in the Device Level Interface arena. T11 assumed the program of work of Task Group X3T9.3 in February 1994, and is co-TAG to ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 25/WG 4 along with T10 & T12, the other former X3T9 Task Groups.

1. Executive Summary

1998-99 has been a period operated on an improved structural change, to T11, that took place during the previous period with continued progress. Emphasis on interoperability and system level issues was placed to select some of the new projects for standards and technical reports included during this period. During the period covered by this report two Fibre Channel standards (FC-SW, FC-AL-2) and two HIPPI standards (HIPPI-FP Revised, HIPPI64-PH.) have been approved. In addition, four projects for new FC standards (FC-GS-3, FC-HSPI, FC-MI, FC-SB-2) have been approved. Also, one FC standard in development (FC-AE) was approved to be changed to a FC Technical Report. Therefore the total program of work of T11 is as follows (the figures in brackets are the numbers from the last T11 Annual Report):

Family

T11 work continues to be recognized and supported by the industry and the conformance to the standards developed has become important to the related products developed. T11 in September 1998 had 77 organizations, but this had diminished slightly to 75 organizations by August 31, 1999. The reduction in membership is mainly due to mergers and acquisitions of the companies within the industry.

The following is the outline of the Task Groups under T11 and their project allocation:

TG T11.1 HIPPI

Projects currently allocated: Revised HIPPI-LE, HIPPI-6400-SC, HIPPI-6400-OPT, ST, ST-API

TG T11.2 Physical Variants

Projects currently allocated: FC-10KCR, FC-CU TR, FC-HSPI, FC-MJS, FC-MJS-2, FC-PI

TG T11.3 Interconnect topologies

Projects allocated: FC-AL-3, FC-FS, FC-MI, FC-SL, FC-SW-2, FC-Tape

TG T11.4 Protocol Mappings

Projects allocated: FC-AE, FC-AV, FC-BB, FC-GS-2, FC-GS-3, FC-SB-2, FC-VI

T11 went through changes in personnel. Due to the resignation of previous chairs, T11 and the task groups T11.3 and T11.1 got new chairs.

2. Projects

2.1 Project 54-L (ISO DP 7069 - 1995)

a. Project Title: Small Computer to Peripheral Bus Interface, Data Transfer between Computer and Peripheral

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

None

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. Current ISO project, no direct T11 involvement.

2.2 Project 496-M (ANSI/ISO 9318-3:1992)

a. Project Title: IPI Device Generic Command Set for Magnetic and Optical Disk Drives

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a packet-based command set for magnetic and optical disk drives which features time-independent operation and is based on a high-level generic device model.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. This published standard will be withdrawn when X3.291:199x is published.

2.3 Project 496-R (A X3.291:1997)

a. Project Title: Revised IPI Device Generic Command Set for Magnetic and Optical Disk Drives

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a revision to ANSI/ISO 9318-3:1992 to incorporate the additional functionality required by new mass storage architectures and to provide mappings to allow the IPI-3 protocols to be transported over the Fibre Channel and HIPPI definitions.

d. Publications During Past Year:

A X3.291:1997

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The draft has completed the approval process, and is with the ANSI editor for processing. However the technical editor has had trouble allocating time to respond to the editor's requests due to other commitments. T11 requested in 97-460 that ANSI/ISO 9318-3:1992 remains in force until processing of this draft is completed. The ISO project has been canceled, and the intent is now to submit the draft for the Fast Track procedure upon publication.

2.4 Project 505-M (ANSI/ISO 9318-4:1992)

a. Project Title: IPI Device Generic Command Set for Magnetic Tape Drives

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a packet-based command set for magnetic tape drives which features time-independent operation and is based on a high-level generic device model.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. This published standard will be withdrawn when X3.290:199x is published.

2.5 Project 505-R (A X3.290:1997)

a. Project Title: Revised IPI Device Generic Command Set for Magnetic Tape Drives

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a revision to ANSI/ISO 9318-4:1992 to incorporate the additional functionality required by new mass storage architectures.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The draft has completed the approval process, and is with the ANSI editor for processing. However the technical editor has had trouble allocating time to respond to the editor's requests due to other commitments. T11 requested in 97-460 that ANSI/ISO 9318-4:1992 remains in force until processing of this draft is completed. The ISO project has been canceled, and the intent is now to submit the draft for the Fast Track procedure upon publication.

2.6 Project 667-M (ANSI X3.183:1991[R1996])

a. Project Title: High Performance Parallel Interface - Physical Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the mechanical, electrical, and signaling protocol specification for a simplex high-performance point-to-point I/O channel, supporting data rates of 800 or 1600 megabits per second over distances of up to 25 meters.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. A further five-year review is due in 2001.

2.7 Project 702-M (ANSI X3.210:1992)

a. Project Title: HIPPI Framing Protocol

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the packet format specification, error notification mechanisms, and identification of those fields necessary to allow the use of the HIPPI interface within a network environment with packet rates of up to 100,000 packets per second.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

This project underwent five-year review in 1997. T11 decided in 6/97 to undertake a revision and a project (702-R) was approved for this in 7/97. T11 requested in 97-460 that X3.210:1992 & X3.210:1992/AM1:1996 remain in force until processing of this new revision is completed.

2.8 Project 702-M (ANSI X3.210:1992/AM1:1996)

a. Project Title: HIPPI Framing Protocol Amendment

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop and amendment to ANSI X3.210-1992 to update the identification of protocols supported by HIPPI and to add a bibliography.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. (See project 702-M: ANSI x3.210-1992 for revision details.)

2.9 Project 702-R (NCITS210:1998)

a. Project Title: Revised HIPPI Framing Protocol

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not applicable

c. Project Description:

To incorporate additional ULP-IDs to support new applications, and to investigate additional capabilities with the restriction of not requiring changes to existing applications.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

On 03/15/99, the IR noted the need for vote on ISO/IEC 18355 HIPPI-FP(Revised 4.8 of NCITS 210:1998), which has now been fast tracked. T11 on 03/15/99 voted by roll call of F49-O00-DNV13 to direct a yes vote on ISO/IEC 18355.

After the BSR review, HIPPI-FP Revised was approved as an ANSI Standard (ANSI NCITS 210-1998) and published in 11/98. T11 voted with F48-O1-DNV27 in 12/98 to assign IR take appropriate actions to have ANSI NCITS 210-1998 (HIPPI-FP Revised) ISO Fast Track processed as a revision of ISO/IEC 11518-2:1996.

2.10 Project 755-D (ANSI X3.230:1994)

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the mechanical, optical, and signaling protocol specification for a high-performance interface for direct attachments to computers, supporting data rates up to 100 megabytes per second or more, over both optical fibre and copper media at distances from 10 meters to one or more kilometers. The interface is capable of transporting the IPI, SCSI, and other command sets and HIPPI and other protocols.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The ISO Project has been canceled, and the published standard is in the Fast Track Procedure. T11 approved submitting the contents of Amendment 1 and Draft Amendment 2 as comments against the DIS Letter Ballot in 6/98 by F59-O00-DNV20. T11 voted by roll call of F32-O00-DNV31 to recommend affirmation unchanged of ANSI X3.230:1994.

a. Project Title: FC-PH Amendment #1

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

This project is to correct a small number of typographical errors and inconsistencies in X3.230-1994.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has not been any activity during the past year within T11 on this project.

2.12 Project 755-M (X3.230:199x)

a. Project Title: FC-PH Amendment #2

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 4/97
Previous 6/97
Actual 10/99

c. Project Description:

To document errors and omissions in X3.230-1994 that have been discovered subsequent to the processing of ANSIX3.230:1994/AM1:1996.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

FC-PH: DAM-2 completed NCITS Compliance Review and the first Public Review closed on 12/08/98. During the Management Review, it was noticed that the authorized edits were not made to the draft submitted to NCITS. Subsequently, T11 voted with F46-O0-DNV26, during the plenary meeting of 02/99, to the Public Review comments embodied in T11/98-356v1 as editorial, incorporated in a new draft, and forward to NCITS for further processing and provide the corrections to the ISO editor. It was approved as an ANSI Standard (NCITS 230-1999), --but--the balloting was on the pre-edit version and NCITS wanted another round of balloting on the edited copy. As a result, T11 has issued a 30-day Letter Ballot to meet the requirement. This Letter Ballot closed on 09/19/99 and met "two-thirds" rule with Y71-N00-DNV04 (with 2 'Yes' ballots including comments).

2.13 Project 789-M (ANSI X3.236:1995)

a. Project Title: Enhanced IPI Device Specific Command Set for Magnetic Disk Drives

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop enhancements to ANSI/ISO 9318-2:1992 to support the additional functionality required by next-generation disk drives. Included in this functionality are support for buffered and cached devices, and zoned recording schemes.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The published standard is due for a five-year review in 2000.

2.14 Project 818-M (ANSI X3.222:1997)

a. Project Title: Revised HIPPI Physical Switch Control

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop extensions to X3.222-1993 to support automated management and configuration discovery functions.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has not been any activity during the past year within T11 on this project.

2.15 Project 825-M (ANSI X3.218:1993)

a. Project Title: HIPPI Encapsulation of ISO 8802-2 (IEEE Std 802.2) Logical Link Control Protocol Data Units

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop an encapsulation of ISO 8802-2 (IEEE Std. 802.2) Logical Link Control Protocol Data Units (PDU's) for transmission over HIPPI.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has not been any activity within T11 during the past year on this project.

2.16 Project 825-R

a. Project Title: High Performance Parallel Interface Encapsulation of ISO 8802-2 (IEEE Std 802.2) Logical Link Control Protocol Data Units Revision

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 10/98

c. Project Description:

To develop a revision of ANSI X3.218-1993, HIPPI-LE, with: (a) replacement of specifications being superceded by references to the new standard; (b) incorporation of editorial changes suggested by the ISO editor; (c) other changes as necessary. The revised standard will not invalidate any existing ANSI X3.218 implementations.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

HIPPI-LE has been approved as a project. The editing is essentially complete, but a pointer to the IETF document for HIPPI ARP is needed. Since this ARP document in IETF is not complete we are holding on to the HIPPI-LE revised document.

2.17 Project 901-M (ANSI X3.297:1997)

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel 2nd Generation Physical Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop enhancements to the Fibre Channel - Physical and Signaling Interface (FC-PH) with support for new functions such as broadcast or multicast, striping, alias addresses, hunt groups and guaranteed bandwidth and latency services. The definition of additional physical variants using new media types, and operating at rates greater than 1.0625 gigabaud are also included.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. A five-year review is due in 2002. A document editor for the ISO version still needs to be identified and resolution of the CD Letter Ballot comments is outstanding.

2.18 Project 954-M (ANSI X3.254:1994)

a. Project Title: FC - Mapping to HIPPI-FP

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a mapping to provide HIPPI-PH and HIPPI-FP equivalent physical level transport capability to the HIPPI upper-layer protocols when using Fibre Channel physical layers.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project other than the direction to the IR below. A five-year review was due. T11, in 3/99 voted by roll call of F32-O00-DNV31 to recommend reaffirmation unchanged of ANSI X3.254:1994.

2.19 Project 955-M (ANSI X3.287:1996)

a. Project Title: FC Link Encapsulation

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a mapping to allow the transport of IP (Internet Protocol) and IEEE 802.2 LLC (Logical Link Control) Protocol Data Units (PDUs) over Fibre Channel.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. This project was cancelled in favor of IETF RFC for running IP and ARP over Fibre Channel.

2.20 Project 957-M (ANSI X3.271:1996)

a. Project Title: FC Mapping of Single Byte Command Code Sets

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the mapping by which Single-Byte Command Code Sets (SBCCS), such as those implemented on Block Multiplexer Channels (also known as Federal Information Processing Standards 60, 63, 97 et al.), may be transported across Fibre Channel.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The FC-SB (ISO Project # 25.13.13.11 CD14165-221) is being withdrawn from ISO standardization (IR 99002 0f 0/29/99) and it was also decided, during the SC 25/WG meeting of 06/99, to process FC-SB-2 as a replacement without a new project proposal.

2.21 Project 958-M (ANSI X3.289:1996)

a. Project Title: FC Fabric Generic Requirements

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the definition of a Fabric, which is the part of the Fibre Channel architecture used to interconnect multiple Fibre Channel ports in a total system. This project will specify the generic capabilities such as fabric initialization, address assignment, fabric services, error recovery, etc., for different topologies such as cross point switches, arbitrated loops, and distributed fabrics.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. FC_GS (ISO Project # 25.13.13.05 DIS 14165-141) CD balloting has been completed and DIS has been issued during the SC 25/WG4 meeting in 06/99.

2.22 Project 959-D (321:199x)

a. Project Title: FC Switch Fabric and Switch Control Requirements

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the unique requirements for a Fibre Channel Fabric based on switching topologies and technologies.

d. Publications During Past Year:

NCITS 321:1998

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

This document is regarded by several companies as the key to defining interoperability between second generation Fibre Channel switches. NCITS management review was completed and the document approved in 06/99 as NCITS 321:1998 and has been published.

2.23 Project 960-M (ANSI X3.272:1996)

a. Project Title: FC Arbitrated Loop

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop the unique requirements for a Fibre Channel Fabric based upon inexpensive, distributed and expandable topologies.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The FC-AL (ISO Project # 25.13.13.06 CD14165-121) is being withdrawn from ISO standardization (IR 99003 0f 0/29/99) and it was also decided, during the SC 25/WG meting of 06/99, to process FC-AL-2 as a replacement without a new project proposal.

2.24 Project 979-M (ANSI X3.283:1996)

a. Project Title: HIPPI - Encapsulation of Frames of the Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a mapping of to allow all protocols and command sets mapped to Fibre Channel to be transported over HIPPI. This will allow a "reverse" migration path for applications ultimately targeted for Fibre Channel, yet must run for some period of time on HIPPI.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. A five-year review is due in 2001. The ISO project has been withdrawn due to lack of interest.

2.25 Project 1026-M (ANSI X3.299:1997)

a. Project Title: HIPPI Mapping to Asynchronous Transfer Mode

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a mapping between HIPPI and ATM constructs to allow the creation of systems incorporating both ATM and HIPPI.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The resolution of DIS 11518-8 HIPPI ATM comments and the editor's report along with the final International Standard text has been provided to SC 25 secretariat. The standard has been published as of SC 25/WG 4 meeting of 06/99.

2.26 Project 1050-M (ANSI X3.288:1996)

a. Project Title: FC Generic Services

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop definitions of a number of service functions designed to support the management and control of Fibre Channel configurations.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The FC-GS (ISO Project # 25.13.13.15 CD14165-411) is being withdrawn from ISO standardization (IR 99006 0f 0/29/99) and it was also decided, during the SC 25/WG meting of 06/99, to process FC-GS-2 as a replacement without a new project proposal.

2.27 Project 1117-M (ANSI X3.300:1997)

a. Project Title: HIPPI Serial Specification

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop an extension to the physical interface defined in X3.183-1991, to support longer-distance operation and serial, fiber-optic media.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The ISO DIS Letter Ballot comments were required. The resolution of DIS 11518-9 HIPPI Serial Comments and the editor's report along with the final International Standard text has been provided to the SC 25 secretariat for publication. The standard has been published as of SC 25/WG 4 meeting of 06/99.

2.28 Project 1118-DT (X3.TR-18:1997)

a. Project Title: 10-bit Interface Technical Report

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a definition for a "child card" containing serialization/deserialization circuitry and a fibre-optic transceiver operating at a gigabit rate.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. The has been a published Technical Report.

2.29 Project 1119-D (X3.303:199x)

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel 3rd Generation Physical Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 12/95
Actual 8/96

c. Project Description:

To develop a third-generation FC physical interface definition.

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There have been no activities of this project during the past year. As of SC 25/WG 4 meeting of 06/99, FC-PH-3 (ISO Project # 25.13.13.16 CD 14165-113) is awaiting CD Letter Ballot resolution

2.30 Project 1132-M (ANSI X3.296:1997)

a. Project Title: Single Byte Command Code Sets Connection

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a publicly-available document reflecting the current industry practice relating to the ESCON interface

d. Publications During Past Year:

None.

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activity in T11 during the past year on this project. A five-year review is due in 2002.

2.31 Project 1133-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel 2nd Generation Arbitrated Loop

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 6/96
Previous 6/97
Actual 8/98

c. Project Description:

To develop a second-generation FC Arbitrated Loop definition, including the definition of new services for real-time applications.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

A T11 Letter Ballot on Revision 5.7 closed on 10/2/97 with F60-O10-DNV13 (4 For ballots included comments, and with the Opposed ballots a total of over 500 comments were returned). At the same time as resolution of these, a T11 roll call vote of F40-O00-DNV23 in 03/99 to accept the responses to the T11 Letter Ballot comments contained in T11/99-165v1, T11/99-144v3, T11/99-055v1, T11/98-544v2 and T11/98-511v3 and to forward Revision 7.0 of the dpANS for the project for further processing, including a Compliance Review and a first Public Review by NCITS, was successfully taken. Subsequently the FC-AL-2 Version 7.0 was submitted to NCITS for further processing. The NCTS Public Review closed on 08/16/99 and the Management Review is complete. There was also a T11 roll call vote to instruct the IR to take the necessary steps for approval of anew work item and simultaneous CD Letter Ballot for FC-AL-2 Rev. 7.0 was successfully taken.

2.32 Project 1134-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel 2nd Generation Generic Services

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 4/96
Previous 12/97
Actual 8/98

c. Project Description:

To develop a set of additional and enhanced service definitions that will be used to support the management and control of Fibre Channel configurations. Included within this scope are services such as distributed directory services, management services, security services and an operations management service.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

T11 Letter Ballot closed in 02/99. T11 voted, by roll call, F45-O1-DNV30 in 12/98 to accept the reposes to the T11 Letter Ballot comments contained in T11/98-559v1 and to forward Revision 5.3 of the dpANS for FC-GS-2 for further processing, including a Compliance Review and a first Public Review. Subsequently FC-GS-2 Revision 5.2 was submitted to NCITS for further processing. In SC 25/WG 4 meeting of 06/99, it was agreed to process FC-GS-2 as a replacement for FC-GS without a new project proposal for International Standard.

2.33 Project 1135-DT

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel Copper Interface Implementation Practice Guide

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 6/96
Previous 6/98
Current 6/99

c. Project Description:

To develop descriptions of the implementation, testing, characterization, and design tradeoffs necessary to create Fibre Channel compatible electrical interfaces.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The working progressing slowly. However the participants are still committed to the task. They still see the need for a reference work in this area and are making progress, albeit slowly. Some issues have been experienced in getting companies to disclose details of approaches, and to provide examples based on their own products - because the knowledge that is being published here has in many cases not been openly discussed before. The ongoing effort to redefine the NCITS copyright situation also periodically gives concern to the participants in this project. While their employers may be persuaded to grant rights under their own copyrights for use in an freely available "industry document", the issue of "derivative rights" and "for profit usage" is much less clear.

2.34 Project 1162-DT (NCITS TR-19:1998)

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel Private Loop Direct Attach

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a subset of other Fibre Channel and SCSI standards for use in devices connected only to isolated single FC loops.

d. Publications During Past Year:

NCITS TR-19:1998

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

There has been no activities during the past year. FC-CU has been published as NCITS TR-19:1998.

2.35 Project 1213-D (NCITS 323:1999)

a. Project Title: HIPPI-6400 MBits/s Physical Layer

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a physical-level, point-to-point, full-duplex link interface for reliable, flow-controlled transmission of user data at 6400 Mbits/s, per direction, over either parallel copper cables or parallel fibre-optic cables. A scheme using small fixed-size micropackets provide an efficient, low-latency structure for small messages, and a building block for large messages.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The NCITS Letter Ballot closed in 11/98 and passed its management review at NCITS. Subsequently, ANSI NCITS 323:1998 (HIPPI-6400-PH) was approved as an ANSI Standard on 11/20/98. Now it is a published standard. T11 voted, by roll call of F48-O1-DNV27 to assign IIR to take the appropriate actions to have ANSI NCITS 323-1998 (HIPPI-5400-PH), when it is published, ISO fast track processed. The fast track has been initiated at SC 25/WG 4 meeting in 06/99.

2.36 Project 1230-DT

a. Project Title: Methodology of Jitter Specification

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 2/97
Previous 6/97
Actual 9/99

c. Project Description:

To provide a background for revising the jitter specifications in FC-PH-x, to increase knowledge of jitter effects in gigabaud serial transmission, and to refine jitter allocations and test methods.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Five more Revisions (6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0) of the dpTR were developed. Due to the very technical nature of the comments , comment resolution on the Letter Ballot has taken some time. The group is doing leading-edge work on jitter measurement techniques and parameters, and the participants bring a wealth of rare experience in the area. T11 voted, by letter Ballot, of F46-O0-DNV29 in 08/99 to accept the responses to the T11 Letter Ballot comments contained in T11/99-392v0 and to forward Revision 10.0 of MJS in T11/99-151v2 to NCITS for publication. Subsequently, MJS Version 10.0 was submitted to NCITS for final approval and publication.

2.37 Project 1231-D (NCITS 324:1999)

a. Project Title: HIPPI-6400 MBits/s Switch Control

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a physical-level switch standard to including 16-bit logical addresses, to span multiple switches, to support auto-configuration & 4 virtual circuits in each direction and to provide control & management functions.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

NCITS 324-199x (HIPPI-6400-SC) passed its second Public review (with no comments) in 11/98, but missed the NCITS deadline. An NCITS Letter Ballot and management review completed in 03/99. The NCITS Letter Ballot closed in 05/99. It was approved as an ANSI Standard (NCITS 324-1999), --but--the balloting was on the pre-edit version and NCITS wanted another round of balloting on the edited copy. As a result, T11 has issued a 30-day Letter Ballot to meet the requirement. This Letter Ballot closed on 09/19/99 and met "two-thirds" rule with Y71-N00-DNV04 (with 1 'Yes' ballot including comments). T11 voted, by ballot, of 48F-O1-DNV27, in 12/98, to have ANSI NCITS 324-199x (HIPPI-6400-SC), when it is approved and published, ISO fast track processed. The fast track process initiated in SC 26/WG 4 meeting in 06/99.

2.38 Project 1232-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Slotted Loop

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 8/97
Previous 2/98
Current 12/99

c. Project Description:

To develop extensions to FC-AL to support isochronous and time deterministic services, including QoS definitions and controls, and methods of managing loop operational parameters.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Although the progress is slow, the pace of the activity in this project has picked up. This project is still the main casualty of the preoccupation with FC-AL-2 throughout 1997 and 1998 and FC-AL-3 in 1999. However due to new requirements additional dpANS Revisions (5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4) were released during the past year.

2.39 Project 1235-DT (NCITS TR-20:1998)

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Fabric Loop Attachment

b. Target date for Milestone 4: Not Applicable

c. Project Description:

To develop a subset of existing definitions to support the development of devices which can be either loop-attached or fabric-attached, and to define cost-effective & efficient methods by which mixed configurations of loops and fabrics can be created, controlled, and managed.

d. Publications During Past Year:

NCITS TR-20:1998

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

This has been a published NCITS TR. There are no further activities in this project during the past year.

2.40 Project 1237-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Audio-Visual

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 10/97
Previous 10/97
Current 12/99

c. Project Description:

To develop definitions: for the transport of ITU RBT-601 and ISO/IEC 3818 (incl MPEG) protocols over FC; for supporting film formats and compressions schemes, YUV and RGB formats etc; and for synchronization of the FC segment with existing analog and digital segments.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

This group has continued to work in close liaison with a subgroup of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) to ensure that the resulting standard will be complementary to, a coherent with, the standards produced by that group. A significant part of the delay has been to ensure that the development of the dpANS remains synchronized with SMPTE activities. Due to the employer's organizational changes the Working Group Chair had to resign. The new chair, who is an industry consultant, after putting significant amount of efforts, had to resign too due to overload in his consultation assignments. Subsequently, the present editor has assumed the additional role of the chair. Given the circumstance, in order to finish the project on time and complete Fast File Transfer and Streaming Protocol sections, T11 voted F42-O0-DNV33, in 08/99, to request NCITS to change the project 1237-D from an NCITS standard to an NCITS Technical Report. The request for this change has been submitted to NCITS in 09/99. Forwarding the document is stalled until this work is completed. The effort of the people working on this project has been so successful that, even in advance of a draft entering the approval process, Fibre Channel is already seen as the key technology in the future development of digital broadcast studio architectures. Due to the impact on the product development in the industry and synchronization with SMPTE, finishing the project on time is crucial.

2.41 Project 1238-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Backbone

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 12/97
Previous 2/99
Current 12/99

c. Project Description:

To develop the mappings necessary to bridge between physically separate instance of the same network definition, including MAC address mapping & translation, configuration discovery, management facilities and mappings of FC Service definitions. Candidate network definitions are all flavors of Ethernet (incl. Gigabit) & FDDI, but will be a function of resources provided.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The group encountered difficulties in persuading the required "network experts" to attend an otherwise storage-focused set of meetings. There was also an issue that the companies that had participated in creating the Project Proposal looked to other technical areas for their immediate products. However during 1998-99 the technical area addressed by this project became of interest to a number of companies, and that solved the problem of lack of expert participation. In the last six months the group has started to make good progress. Ad Hoc meetings have been specifically scheduled to take make up for the lost time. Four revisions of the draft have been produced, with the most recent (99-377v1). Due to lack of interest among the member companies and in the industry, the decision was made to retain WAN (BBW) section in the FC-BB document and to move LAN (BBL) section to a future project. As the demand for remote Fibre Channel connectivity to provide solution for disaster recovery and remote back up of data is increasing, this project is viewed as one of the important and strategic parts of Fibre Channel technology. The related product development, in the industry, is being pursued in advance of the completion of the FC-BB standard.

2.42 Project 1245-D

a. Project Title: Scheduled Transfers

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 4/98
Current 10/99

c. Project Description:

To develop a high-performance data transfer protocol standard with the following goals: - Small control messages to pre-arrange buffers at each end of the transfer. - A message syntax that allows hardware-based message delivery to the pre-arranged buffers at the receiving end. - Separate logical control and data channels, which may use different physical media, or may share a single physical medium. - Support for "Get" and "Put" operations. - Support for using buffer indices and 64-bit addresses. - Parameters exchanged between the end devices for port selection, transfer identification, and operation validation. - Efficient mapping between the sender's and receiver's natural buffer sizes. - Provisions for re-sending partial transfers for error recovery.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Progress continues. The real world experiences of implementation and layering of Upper Level Protocols (ULPs) on ST continues to reveal additional required work. As a result multiple versions of the document have been produced.

2.43 Project 1249-D

a. Project Title: HIPPI-6400 MBits/s Optical Specification

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 10/98
Current 08/99

c. Project Description:

To develop a high-performance parallel optical interconnect standard with the following goals: - Optical multi-mode fibers used in parallel, with the total bandwidth being the sum of the bandwidth on the individual fibers. - A system that is eye-safe in a commercial environment, either by limited power from the operating fibers or by an open fiber control system to reduce the power when not in a closed-loop configuration. - A system that is general enough for use in other applications. - Specification of the optical parameters, connectors, ferrules, and fiber. - Specification of the electrical interface parameters.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Due to the fact that the technology needs to catch up before the optical link, based on the document, could be tested. There is sense of holding back of the draft standard from forwarding to further processing until some one will

build the component parts and that they will work. Primary goal is to make a link fit within a workable jitter budget. This looks do-able, but final resolution is still waiting on construction of a test card and SuMAC characterization at 1 Gbaud.

2.44 Project 1300-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - 10 Km Cost-Reduced Physical variant

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 6/98
Actual 4/98

c. Project Description:

To develop a Fibre Channel 10 Kilometer Cost Reduced standard. Included within the recommended scope of this project are: 1) The definition of an additional FC Physical Variant using single-mode fibre plant, with transmitter and receiver characteristics which permit a substantially reduced optical component cost than allowed by the 10 Kilometer Physical Variants which are already defined in X3.230, FC-PH and X3.297, FC-PH-2. 2) The definition of interoperability, where possible, between parts meetings the requirements of the new physical variant and parts meeting the requirements of existing physical variants. Note that this project will define an additional physical variant, and will not amend or remove any of the existing physical variant definitions.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

FC-10KCR Revision 3.0 completed the OMC Compliance Review and the Letter Ballot closed on 12/08/98. It was approved as an ANSI Standard (NCITS 326-1999), --but--the balloting was on the pre-edit version and NCITS wanted another round of balloting on the edited copy. As a result, T11 has issued a 30 day Letter Ballot to meet the requirement. This Letter Ballot closed on 09/19/99 and met "two-thirds" rule with Y69-N01-DNV05 (with 3 'Yes' ballots including comments).

2.45 Project 1304-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Arbitrated Loop - 3

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 2/99
Current 02/00

c. Project Description:

To develop an FC-AL-3 standard. It is a requirement of this project that FC-AL-3 devices shall interoperate with devices operating in FC-AL-2 compliant mode. FC-AL-3 environments shall permit operation of FC-AL-2 devices. Included within the recommended scope of this project are: 1) Improved media access schemes; 2) Other enhancements determined to be necessary by experience with existing implementations.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

The work began in earnest as the FC-AL-2 Project started winding down and the members are able to attend the meetings and contribute. The work began with a proposal for Multiple Circuit Mode (MCM) as the basic technology for FC-AL-3. The group is committed to be backward compatible to FC-AL-2 to take care of the legacy connectivity of the installed base. Much work was done on MCM and SAT protocol. After several iterations of the proposals, both MCM and SAT were approved for inclusion in the FC-AL-3 draft by the Task Group. Since still a considerable amount of work to be done, the draft FC-AL-3 standard is not expected to be ready to be forwarded for further processing by 02/00.

2.46 Project 1305-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Switch Fabric - 2

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 12/98
Current 12/99

c. Project Description:

To develop a Fibre Channel Second Generation Switch Fabric (FC-SW-2) standard. Included within the recommended scope of this project are extensions to the Inter-Switch Link definition to support: 1) Unicast Path Selection; 2) Coordination of the Common Service definitions being produced by Project 1134-D, Fibre Channel - Generic Services 2 (FC-GS-2); 3) Models of flow control schemes defined by FC-PH-x; 4) Multicast Path Selection; 5) Other enhancements derived from experience with first-generation FC-SW implementations. It is a key goal of this project that devices meeting the definitions produced herein be backwards compatible with devices meeting the existing FC-SW definitions. Note however that some of the functions based on FC-SW-2 definitions may not be available in configurations which incorporate switches only meeting the FC-SW requirements.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Initially few meetings were dedicated to identify the system requirements Real work began once separation of system issues from the switch requirement was accomplished. Also it was made sure that the requirement to connect switches geographically separated by a Wide Area Network (WAN) using either ATM translation or direct Sonet mapping is supported. All the FC-SW standard specifications will be maintained to allow backward compatibility. The document structure and the table of contents has been completed. To address interoperability between switches from multiple vendors, concept of "Autonomous Regions" was introduced. The draft standard will provide address assignment, path selection, and the related protocol and communication issues between the "Autonomous Regions" with interconnected switches from different vendors in different "Autonomous Regions". There is enough expertise in the working group to complete this complex work as five different switch vendors are presently represented. New draft of FC-SW-2 Version 4.1 (T11/99-442v0) is going through review.

2.47 Project 1306-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Physical Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 10/98
Current 10/99

c. Project Description:

To develop a Fibre Channel 1998 Physical Interface (FC-PI'98) standard. Included within the recommended scope of this project are: 1) The creation of new electrical physical variant definitions at data rates in excess of 1.0626 gigabaud; 2) The creation of new optical physical variant definitions at data rates in excess of 1.0626 gigabaud; 3) The selection of the existing physical variant definitions (both electrical and optical) which are suitable for use in current and future implementations as of 1998; 4) The full definition of the SG optical connector previously approved for inclusion by T11; 5) Other improvements to physical variant definitions that have been suggested by experience with existing implementations. Note that the exclusion of existing physical variant definitions from this document will be approved by specific motions only after the widest possible publicity within the T11 community.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Several attempts, to include both MT-RJ and LC types as alternate optical connectors in addition to already selected SG and Duplex SC connectors, by different connector companies has created a lot of controversy. To avoid the controversy, there was also an attempt by some members to totally eliminate the connectors from the Draft Standard. Although, presently all the four optical connectors are assumed to be included in FC-PI (Optical). A lot of progress has been made in PI - Copper section.

2.48 Project 1315-DT

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Tape Technical Report

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 8/98
Current 06/99

c. Project Description:

To document a subset of existing Fibre Channel definitions to support streaming devices and medium changers, including, support for additional functions defined in X3.269:1996 (FCP), and being defined in Project 1144-D, FCP-2. The project will focus on class 3 operation and private NL_Port configurations between SCSI initiators and targets. Support of streaming devices and medium changers over FC-AL using other FC classes of service or other configurations may be addressed in this project proposal if the specified target date can be met.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

T11, during the plenary meeting in 10/08, accepted the request to conduct a Letter Ballot on FC-TAPE Technical Report on revision 1.12. The Letter Ballot completed in 12/98 with many comments. T11, voted, with F47-O0-DNV25, in 06/99 to accept the responses to the T11 Letter Ballot comments contained in T11/99-092v2 and to forward Revision 1.17 of the dpANS for Project 1315-DT, FC-TAPE, to NCITS, for further processing, including a Compliance Review. This has been already forwarded to NCITS for necessary action.

2.49 Project 1316-DT

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel - Methodology of Jitter Specification 2 Technical Report

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 2/2000
Current 2/2000

c. Project Description:

To define methodologies that will support the physical layer used by the FC Protocol transport layer while maintaining a high degree of compatibility with the methodologies of FC-MJS. This may include an extension of FC-MJS methodologies to higher data rates, improved compliance testing methods, a more precise algorithm for extracting Gaussian jitter components from the total jitter population, and a treatment of jitter accumulation. Interaction of signal amplitude, signal/noise, slew rate, receiver sensitivity, component bandwidth and transmission reflections may also be considered.

d. Publications During Past Year:

e. Statement of Progress and Current Status:

Work on this project will not begin until the prior-generation document (FC-MJS) is forwarded for further processing.

2.50 Project 1331-D

a. Project Title: Fibre Channel Framing and Signaling Interface

b. Target date for Milestone 4:

Original 10/98
Current 12/99

c. Project Description:

To consolidate the relevant sections (framing and signaling) from FC-PH, FC-PH-2, and FC-PH-3 and associated errata, annexes and amendments into a single encompassing document. The project may also involve the deletion or obsoleting of outdated functions and features from those documents, the inclusion of additional link services in support of new functions defined by the FC family of documents, the inclusion of improvements and clarifications to the definitions of existing services as dictated by experience with existing implementations, and other capabilities which will improve the performance of existing FC products and fit those products for new applications.

d. Publications During Past Year: