By Larry Cleland
Early availability of key Design Intellectual Property (IP) is critical for enabling a new standard. Such is the case for Gen-Z. When the Consortium was formed, HPE contributed the 0.7e IP which enabled the development of early demos that boot strapped the working groups. The donated IP, however, was not planned for additional development that would allow the contributed IP to be compliant with Rev 1.0 (and beyond) of the Core Specification which defines the features required for Gen-Z to fully meet industry needs. Early in the development of new standards there are ongoing changes to the features, specifications and implementation details which require constant modifications by early adopters in order to stay current with the evolving specifications. Early adopters developing IP and products prior to the release of the 1.0 version of a defining specification can be risky due to these continual modifications and the specification disclaimer of “Subject to Change.”
In the case of the Gen-Z Core Specification, rev 1.0 was released in August 2018. Since the initial release, there have been hundreds of changes to rev 1.0 of the Core Specification to achieve the release of rev 1.1, which occurred in February 2020.
Early in its membership IntelliProp believed in the promise of Gen-Z and made the business decision to invest in developing licensable Silicon Design IP necessary to enable products to attach to the Gen-Z Fabric. IntelliProp made an initial IP release in 1Q 2018 in order to support the Consortium’s Proof of Concept Working Group (PoCWG) industry demo activity, a full seven months before the official release of rev 1.0 of the Core Specification. Continual modifications have been required to the IP in order to stay current with the evolving specification and to implement the new features desired to be showcased in the Consortium demos. The industry demos developed by the Consortium and enabled by Gen-Z IP are intended to provide demonstrable results to the industry regarding the abilities of Gen-Z to achieve the results that are claimed. The produced demos have been incrementally expanding the scope of the demos as the Core Specification and the IP has developed. The pre-1.1 (1.0a) revision IP utilized in the PoCWG demos at SC19 significantly increased industry excitement with the ability to demonstrate high performance Gen-Z traffic generated from multiple servers sharing multiple Gen-Z Memory Modules in several Media Boxes solely over the Gen-Z fabric. The need for early available IP to support proof-of-concept demonstrations provides credibility for the Consortium and demo progression illustrates consortium progress and consistent visibility to the industry.
Due to the many different products that are contemplated in the Gen-Z ecosystem, IntelliProp elected to take a modular approach to the Design IP definition. This allows the end customer to optimize their product development by selecting only the IP necessary for their product development. Six (6) individual IP make up the complete Gen-Z Design IP offering from IntelliProp. All have been released and are currently available.
IntelliProp also felt it would be helpful for Consortium Members to get an early start “kicking the tires” of Gen-Z and developed an evaluation program that allows interested members to develop PoC products with rev 1.1 compliant evaluation IP without committing to a full license and the associated costs and limitations.
IntelliProp has released the following Gen-Z Design IP: