Dolphin SISCI developers kit

The Dolphin SISCI Developers kit (Software Infrastructure Shared-Memory Cluster Interconnect) consists of driver and API software, tools, documentation and source needed to develop your own embedded application utilizing the low latency and high performance of a Dolphin PCI Express Cluster. The development kit provides a C system call interface to ease customer integration to Dolphins cluster interconnect.  SISCI enables customer application to easily bypass the limitations of traditional network solutions, avoiding time consuming operating system calls, and network protocol software overhead. The SISCI software supports clusters of hundreds of nodes.

The SISCI API has been defined in the European Esprit project 23174 as  an industry standard Application Programming Interface (API) for shared memory based clustering. The SISCI API is available for the Dolphin Express IX, DX and SCI technology from Dolphin.

 

Superiour performance

Using the latest Dolphin PCI Express IX technology SISCI applications can direcly benefit from remote access time down to 0.74 microseconds and more than 3500 Mega bytes / second througput. Direct mapped NTB PIO access gives extremely low transaction overhead and jitter for real-time systems. DMA capabilities provide very high throughput without using CPU for data transfers. Customers can combine PIO and DMA operations for maximum application benefits and performance.

 

Typical applications for SISCI

Many applications has successfully migrated to the powerful SISCI environment after it initially become available in 1999. The following application areas are known to Dolphin:

  • Low latency, low jitter realtime simulators, electronic trading
  • Bus bridging PCIe-PCI-XMC-VME-PXI-VPX-cPCI using carrier cards
  • Remote access to IO Systems
  • Direct device to device transfers, direct GPU and FPGA communication
  • Reflective memory functionality
  • High Availability servers / Fast fail over
  • Fat pipes / low latency messaging
  • Bridging between operating systems and endianness.

 

Shared memory programming made easy

Using SISCI you can easily create an application or library that can

  • Send and receive interrupt from remote user applications
  • Send and receive messages
  • Access local and remote memory directly
  • Access to local and remote device memory
  • Use DMA to move large amounts of data between nodes
  • Set up and manage PCIe peer to peer  device transfers

 

SISCI Documentation

The following SISCI documentation is available:

 

Examples and test programs

The developers kit includes source for several small test and example applications that can be used as a basis or reference for new application development.

 

Success Stories

The SISCI API has been an important building block for various embedded projects and products since 1999. Take a look at some of the success stories.

 

Availability

Dolphin SISCI Developers kit are currently available for Dolphin Express IX, DX and SCI cluster interconnect. The list of currently supported operating systems are:

 

 

Interconnect Supported Operating System
Dolphin IX Linux,Windows, RTX - (Contact Dolphin for VxWorks)
Dolphin DX Linux, Windows - (contact Dolphin for VxWorks support)
Dolphin SCI/D Linux, Windows, VxWorks

The SISCI software is also available to IDT customers building their own hardware products based on IDT PCI Express Gen2 and Gen3 chipsets (Logan, Northstar, Phoenix). Please contact Dolphin for more information.

 

Support

SISCI is fully supported and maintained by Dolphin. Support for SISCI related issues can be requested by sending an e-mail to pci-support@dolphinics.com

Dolphin or one of our recommended consulting companies can assist you to migrate to a SISCI based solutions. Please contact Dolphin for more information.