RapidIO vs. Ethernet A Practical Technical Comparison

Ethernet is currently the incumbent backplane technology across a wide range of storage, wireless, wireline, military, industrial, and other embedded applications as developers move away from proprietary implementations in an effort to reduce development time and cost while increasing performance and functionality. However, as data rates increase, it has become apparent that many high-performance applications exceed the limits of this traditional protocol. Designing an efficient embedded backplane interconnect with excellent performance requires addressing a number of key design challenges, including header efficiency, protocol processing efficiency, effective bandwidth, and quality of service while strictly managing cost. To meet these challenges, many developers are turning to RapidIO® technology as an alternative to Ethernet.