Dolphin SISCI developers kit

The Dolphin SISCI Developers kit (Software Infrastructure Shared-Memory Cluster Interconnect) consists of driver and API software, tools, documentation and source needed to develop your own embedded application utilizing the low latency and high performance of a Dolphin Express Cluster. The development kit provides a C system call interface to ease customer integration to Dolphins cluster interconnect.  SISCI enables customer application to easily bypass the limitations of traditional network solutions, avoiding time consuming operating system calls, and network protocol software overhead. The SISCI software supports clusters of hundreds of nodes

The SISCI API has been defined in the European Esprit project 23174 as  an industry standard Application Programming Interface (API) for shared memory based clustering.

 

Typical applications for SISCI

Many applications has successfully migrated to the powerful SISCI environment after it initially become available in 1999. The following application areas are known to Dolphin:

  • Low latency, low jitter realtime simulators
  • Bus bridging PCIe-PCI-PMC-cPCI
  • Remote access to IO Systems
  • Direct device to device transfers
  • Reflective memory like clusters (DX Only)
  • High Availability servers / Fast fail over
  • Fat pipes / low latency messaging
  • Bridging between operating systems and endianness.

 

Shared memory programming made easy

Using SISCI you can easily create an application or library that can

  • Send and receive interrupt from remote user applications
  • Send and receive messages
  • Access local and remote memory directly
  • Access to local and remote device memory
  • Use DMA to move large amounts of data between nodes
  • Set PCIe peer to peer transfers

 

SISCI Documentation

The following SISCI documentation is available for download.:

Please note that the documentation is not yet fully updated to include the Dolphin Express DX family. Most functionality is supported on both interconnects. Please contact Dolphin Support for more details.

 

Examples and test programs

The developers kit includes source for several small test and example applications that can be used as a basis or reference for new application development.

 

International space station (ISS)

The SISCI API is used by several real time customers for many years. One of the most famous implementations is an astronaut training simulator for the International Space station (ISS).

 

Availability

Dolphin SISCI Developers kit are available for both the Dolphin SCI/D and Dolphin DX Express cluster interconnect. The list of currently supported operating systems:

 

Interconnect Supported Operating System
Dolphin SCI / D Linux,Windows,VxWorks
Dolphin DX Linux, Windows (contact Dolphin for VxWorks support)

 

Support

SISCI is fully supported and maintained by Dolphin. Support for SISCI related issues can be requested by sending an e-mail to pci-support@dolphinics.com

Dolphin or one of our recommended consulting companies can assist you to migrate to a SISCI based solutions. Please contact Dolphin for more information.