Context
There are two broad categories of chip-to-chip interfaces. The first, exemplified by PCI-Express and HyperTransport, supports reads and writes of memory addresses. The second broad category carries user packets over 1 or more channels and is exemplified by the IEEE 802.3 family of Media Independent Interfaces and the Optical Internetworking Forum family of System Packet Interfaces. Of these last two, the family of System Packet Interfaces is optimized to carry user packets from many channels. The family of System Packet Interfaces is the most important packet-oriented, chip-to-chip interface family used between devices in the Packet over SONET and Optical Transport Network, which are the principal protocols used to carry the internet between cities.
The term SPI may also refer to a set of low-rate serial communications protocols, not related to optical communications, usually used for transferring data between devices on a printed circuit board; more information may be found here: Serial Peripheral Interface.
Read more about this topic: System Packet Interface
Famous quotes containing the word context:
“Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one’s own childhood problems in the context of one’s relation to one’s child.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Parents are led to believe that they must be consistent, that is, always respond to the same issue the same way. Consistency is good up to a point but your child also needs to understand context and subtlety . . . much of adult life is governed by context: what is appropriate in one setting is not appropriate in another; the way something is said may be more important than what is said. . . .”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)