From: Robert Watson <Robert_Watson@pmc-sierra.com>
To: "'David Freeman'" <David.Freeman@finisar.com>, t10@t10.org
Subject: RE: SAS 2 - scrambler operation
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:55:11 -0700
X-Message-Number: 7932
Formatted message: HTML-formatted message

While I agree that it would be easier from an implementation point of view to
overlay the data, it would not seem (to me) to be in keeping with the rest of
the standard, as Stephen illustrates. So I prefer pausing the scrambler when
a primitive is inserted.
For the second question - reception is vendor specific, I believe; but what
is transmitted should be, in my opinion, well defined.
Thanks,
Robert Watson
PMC-Sierra,Inc.
  _____  
From: owner-t10@t10.org [mailto:owner-t10@t10.org] On Behalf Of David Freeman
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:33 AM
To: t10@t10.org
Subject: RE: SAS 2 - scrambler operation
Would it not be easier to have just a free-running scrambler where the output
is muxed into the data stream instead of adding extra logic to pause the
scrambler for primitives. So, yes, Primitive are not scrambled, however, I
would prefer to not have to pause the idle data generator every time in need
to insert a primitive.
Are we expecting to be able to descramble the data and verify that it is
really all zeros?
Regards,
David Freeman
  _____  
From: owner-t10@t10.org [mailto:owner-t10@t10.org] On Behalf Of Stephen FINCH
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 6:47 AM
To: 'Robert Watson'; t10@t10.org
Subject: RE: SAS 2 - scrambler operation
I'd like to address the question by use of an example.
In a normal frame (between SOF and EOF or between SOAF and EOAF), the
scrambler is not advanced is a ALIGN primitive is inserted.  In fact, the
scrambler is not be advanced when any primitive is inserted, such as RRDY or
ACK.  Since the TRAIN and TRAIN_DONE patterns consists of TRAIN and
TRAIN_DONE primitives and scrambled data then, by the example above, the
scrambler would not be advanced when the primitive portions of the patterns
are sent.
In section 7.6 it states:
"All data dwords are scrambled. Table 117 lists the scrambling for different
types of data dwords."
In a brief search of SAS-2, I didn't find an explicit statement that
primitives are not scrambled, but they aren't.
Regards,
Steve Finch 
  _____  
From: owner-t10@t10.org [mailto:owner-t10@t10.org] On Behalf Of Robert Watson
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:19 PM
To: 't10@t10.org'
Subject: SAS 2 - scrambler operation
6.7.4.2.3.4 Train-SNW defines two training patterns: TRAIN pattern and
TRAIN)DONE pattern. Both are defined as their respective redundant primitive
followed by 58 dwords set to 0x00000000 scrambled and 8b10b encoded.
Furthermore, the scrambler is initialized at the end of RCDT and is not
re-initialized after that.
The question we have is : Does the scrambler pause while sending TRAIN or
TRAIN_DONE primitives; that is, is the dword following the primitive the
scrambler's successor dword to the dword preceding the primitive? Or does the
scrambler run continuously, and TRAIN or TRAIN_DONE is overlayed on top of
scrambler dwords? I would expect the former, but I don't feel that the
current draft (sas2r10) is clear in this regard.
Thanks,
Robert Watson
PMC-Sierra, Inc.