RapidIO®: The unified fabric for Performance Critical Computing
RapidIO®, the unified fabric for performance critical computing, addresses needs in Data Center & High Performance Computing, Communications Infrastructure, Industrial Automation and Military & Aerospace markets by offering high reliability, increased bandwidth, and low latency in an intra-system unified fabric. RapidIO provides chip-to-chip, board-to-board and shelf to shelf peer to peer connectivity at performance levels scaling to 100s of Gigabits per second and beyond.
RapidIO.org, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of RapidIO. Members of RapidIO.org have access to and participate in the development RapidIO interconnect architecture specifications, reference designs and bus functional models. Learn more about RapidIO.org.
The RapidIO® Ecosystem
RapidIO has a complete Ecosystem consisting of:
Standard components (ASSPs)
IP Cores for Endpoints and Switches supporting both ASIC and FPGA deployment
Software stacks for Linux and RTOSs
Verification IP (VIP)
Markets Deploying RapidIO® Technology
RapidIO® components have been deployed in a wide range of industries and applications:
RapidIO Fabrics enjoy dominant market share in global deployment of cellular infrastructure 3G, 4G & LTE networks with over 45 million RapidIO ports shipped into wireless base stations to date. RapidIO Fabrics were originally designed to support connecting different types of processors from different manufacturers together in a single system.
This flexibility has driven the widespread use of RapidIO Fabrics in wireless infrastructure equipment where there is a need to combine general purpose, digital signal, FPGA and communication processors together in a tightly coupled system with low latency and high reliability.
For applications ranging from nanometer-accurate motion control to real-time image processing, RapidIO Fabrics deliver key performance metrics such as best in class switch cut through latency of ~100ns, lossless data flow, small footprint and lowest overall power consumption when compared to other fabric technologies.
Over the last several years, Aerospace and Military electronic systems have become increasingly network-centric, relying more and more on the quality of the data they receive from sensors on land, at sea, and in the air. These systems require high bandwidth combined with low latency to move the data quickly from chip to chip, box to box, and system to system.
RapidIO has solidified a dominant market position within intensive signal-processing applications like radar and sonar.
Offering peer to peer connectivity, low deterministic latency and high availability features such as High Availability/Redundant System Hardware (HARSH) profiles RapidIO technology provides the optimum solutions for sensor fusion challenges. RapidIO fabrics deliver highly reliable, fault tolerant performance to demanding safety critical applications.
RapidIO® Technology Roadmap
RapidIO is an open-standard, switched fabric designed by industry leaders specifically for developers of data center computing, wireless infrastructure, edge networking, storage, scientific, military and industrial equipment. RapidIO technology delivers the reliability, cost effectiveness, performance and scalability required for these application areas — as well as offers a broad ecosystem of partners and suppliers, with products and solutions available for your designs today. As shown below, the RapidIO standard roadmap is well attuned to the changes affecting system designs, ensuring RapidIO technology will meet your future system needs.
RapidIO® Working Groups
The NGSIS Task Group will develop a space specific Part S specification as part of the RapidIO interconnect standard specifications. The purpose of the Part S specification will be to provide an industry and government agreed standard for intra-satellite physical and logical interconnects, based on the RapidIO interconnect standard that covers high and low-data rate use cases.
RapidIO.org supports:
- UVM-based and other verification IP that can reduce overall verification effort
- Compliance checklists to simplify test plan development
- A verification community to help new members quickly and efficiently develop compliant RapidIO products
The RapidIO Software Task Group shall be responsible for developing the open source interface definitions and implementations using the “C” language under the Linux operating system for the following functionality:
- “Data Path Software” for high performance data transfers between RapidIO endpoints
- “Fabric Management Software” and “Command Line Interpreter” for RapidIO Fabric and Endpoint management
- Other functionality as necessary to support RapidIO systems development and deployment
The objective of the Marketing Working Group (MWG) is to establish a strategy that will accelerate adoption of RapidIO in the high performance embedded marketplace and that will result in broad deployment in the appropriate applications. We will accomplish this goal through a number of diverse marketing activities that involve competitive analysis, positioning, new member recruitment, user education, and promotion within the industry.
RapidIO® Blog
Portland, Oregon. (March 1, 2021). Praesum Communications announces general availability of its Serial RapidIO 4.1 Streaming Endpoint Core for Microchip PolarFire programmable devices. The core simplifies the transport of real-time streaming data across RapidIO using the Part 10: Data Streaming Logical Specification, an emerging standard for sensor data transport. Sensor Fusion is an umbrella term for applications that collect data from multiple sensors (cameras, analog to digital converters etc.) correlate and process…
MILPITAS, CALIF. — August xx, 2020 — Mobiveil, Inc., a fast-growing supplier of silicon intellectual property (IP), platforms and IP-enabled design services, today announced that its 25xN RapidIO® Specification 4.1 compliant digital controller is now in volume production in customer silicon. Reaching volume production status for any IP is particularly important for customers as it minimize the risk of expensive SOC development. The 25xN RapidIO Specification 4.1 offers 100 gigabits…
Santa Rosa, Calif. (September 14, 2018). Praesum Communications continues to be a vanguard in networking technology with the introduction of RapidIO® Distributed Queuing Unit (DQU) switching IP, a scalable switch architecture capable of multi-terabit aggregate switching performance. RapidIO DQU Switch is a set of IP building blocks coupled with a complete development environment that can be used to create an extensive array of RapidIO switch configurations. ” Interconnect issues are…
Today, Rapidio.org, the open standards body that promotes and develops specifications for the RapidIO interconnect architecture announced the public release of RapidIO specification Revision 4.1. In Revision 4.1, the space extensions and device classes added in Revision 3.1 have been renamed to High Availability / Redundant System Hardware (HARSH) to clarify the application to any high reliability system based on the RapidIO protocol for platforms such as aircraft, power plants,…