Enabling the construction of high-performance, scalable, modular, parallel systems with low system integration cost is discussed. Complementary use of physical connectors and cables, electrical properties, and logical protocols for point-to-point serial scalable interconnect, operating at speeds of 10–200 Mb/s and at 1 Gb/s in copper and optic technologies, is described.

The scope of this standard is the physical connectors and cables, electrical properties, and logical protocols for point-to-point serial scalable interconnect, operating speeds of 10–200 Mb/s and at 1 Gb/s in copper and optic technologies [as developed in Open Microprocessor Systems Initiative/Heterogeneous InterConnect Project (OMI/HIC)].

The purpose of this standard is to enable high performance, scalable, modular, parallel systems to be constructed with low system integration cost; to support communications systems fabric; to provide a transparent implementation of a range of high level protocols [communications (e.g., ATM), message passing, shared memory transactions, etc.], and to support links between heterogeneous systems.