An open standard, packet-switched fabric from the RapidIO Trade Association, Austin, TX (www.rapidio.org). It is used for the switch backplane in networking, storage, military and industrial devices. Replacing proprietary interconnects, RapidIO is widely implemented in carrier infrastructure switches for 2G/3G, VoIP and video applications.

Using 8b10b encoding and 256-byte packets, RapidIO Version 1.0 provides data rates from 1 to 10 Gbps in both directions. Version 2.0 increases the rate to 40 Gbps.

Multi-Layer, Flexible and QoS
Designed with independent logical, transport and physical layers, RapidIO supports flow control, data streaming and multicast. It also supports up to 256 traffic classes, enabling identification of a wide variety of applications for fine tuning quality of service (QoS).