Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) Technology

SCSI began in the PC world as a means to attach peripherals to PC and workstations. It has become a standard in small and medium size systems for attachment of "high I/O" devices (hard drives, CDs, tape drives, etc.). During the time of the original standards work, about 1985, SCSI was specified at 5 Mbytes/sec, with actual implementations usually achieving around 1 or 2 Mbytes/sec. SCSI was originally an asynchronous protocol, supporting a maximum of eight devices in a daisy-chained configuration.

As the SCSI standard evolved, more features were added. Tagged command queuing allows a device to accept many commands and to execute them in an efficient order. Differential SCSI calls for pairs of wires (as opposed to the set of single wires in "single ended" SCSI), with each wire carrying the logical inverse of the other, canceling noise and allowing for a longer cable length. The data path increased from 8 to 16 to 32 bits (wide SCSI). The number of devices and, of course, the data rate continues to go up.

For SCSI 3, the SCSI 2 standard was divided into a family of standards allowing for different physical transport layers (such as Fibre Channel) to be defined.

Crossroads Storage Routers provide seamless connectivity for data transfer between Fibre Channel and SCSI devices. With Crossroads solutions, you can capitalize on the advantage of Storage Area Networking.

Crossroads Products

To learn more about Crossroads products that provide support for this industry standard and enable you to connect business with information regardless of technology or location, see our industry leading Fibre Channel to SCSI storage routers:

Crossroads 6240 Storage Router
Crossroads 6000 Storage Router
Crossroads SA20

To learn more about how to purchase our products, see:

How To Buy