A comparison of high-speed data links, their commercial support and ongoing R&D activities

The authors describe high-speed communication links and protocols of interest for high-energy physics data acquisition systems. The protocols covered are High Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI), Serial HIPPI, Fibre Channel (FC), and Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI). The initial work required to implement an SDC (Solenoidal Detector Collaboration)-like data acquisition system is also described. >