[Arm-netbook] EOMA server standard

[Baybal Ni]

Answering my own question, I just thought that PHY's are integrated
too deep within the networking architecture. Taking them out wouldn't
be a feasible solution. So, this way we are left with "twisted wire on
PCB variant"

On 25 October 2012 14:25, Baybal Ni <nikulinpi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not connect modules without any transceivers? My idea was that
> modules sharing the same backplane would connect to switch chip
> without any phy's, and only one output leading out of U2 will have a
> phy for UTP or SFP+ socket.
>
> On 25 October 2012 14:16, luke.leighton <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 10:03 PM, peter green <plugwash at p10link.net> wrote:
>>
>>> [lots of useful technical stuff snipped]
>>
>>> Personally I think it may be too early to design a backplane standard
>>> for arm servers and we may need to wait and see whether the bulk of the
>>> market follows the marvell approach or the calexeda one. If you had to
>>> choose one i'd probablly be inclined to go with the marvell one as at
>>> least it can fairly easilly support non server-specific SoCs.
>>>> for the pin-outs i figured that at least one 10GBase-T interface (8
>>>> pins plus 8 GND spacers) would be acceptable,
>>> Using 10GBASE-T to communicate with backplanes is crazy since it's power
>>> hungry as hell even using 1000BASE-T is still pretty crazy. Remember the
>>> SoCs don't support BASE-T directly they need seperate transceiver chips.
>>
>>  yes.  that's where i was hoping to put the standard: somewhere which
>> is pretty obviously just a matter of plugging servers into standard
>> switches, basically.
>>
>> i.e. imagine that the backplane standard's prototype could be
>> constructed from off-the-shelf switches, off-the-shelf cables and
>> off-the-shelf hard drives, what hardware would you pick?  those are
>> the lines along which i'm thinking, perhaps naively, i don't know.
>>
>> ah i've got an idea.  if the cards are stacked on top of each other,
>> you could have a 2-height one have 2 connectors.  or a 3-height one
>> have 3 connectors.  that way, if you wanted one particularly thick
>> card to have 2 lots of ethernets, you'd make it cover 2 slots.
>>
>> achh :)
>>
>> l.
>>
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