SimpleTech ZeusIOPS User Manual

Zeus

IOPS

 3.5-Inch Fibre Channel Solid State Drive Product Manual Rev. 1.0

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The Fibre Channel standard is structured into FCP Function Levels, where “FCP” is “Fibre Channel 
Protocol”. There is a hierarchy of function levels, written FC-0 to FC-4, and on top of those lies the 
Upper Level Protocols or ULP. Table 32 summarizes each FCP level.

FC-0

This level defines the cable, transceivers, and connector. For example, the Zeus

IOPS

 

3.5-inch Fibre Channel SSD uses copper cable and a 40-Pin SCA-2 connector.

FC-1

This level defines the 8B/10B encoding of the basic word in the data stream. This 

encoding consists of four characters. A word contains data or contains an ordered set 

that serves as control information.

FC-2

This level defines how the words are structured in frames, sequences, exchanges and 

packets.

FC-3

This level defines the common services. All communication through a node passes 

through the common service protocol level, allowing networking features such as 

“stripping” data, and “multicasting” to many nodes.

FC-4

Maps the lower protocols to the ULPs.

ULP

This is the protocol that is transported by the Fibre Channel. For example, the 

Zeus

IOPS

 SSD has FCP-SCSI as its ULP.