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3.5-Inch Fibre Channel Solid State Drive Product Manual Rev. 1.0 57
The Fibre Channel standard is structured into FCP Function Levels, where “FCP” is “Fibre Channel
Protocol”. There is a hierarchy of function levels, written FC-0 to FC-4, and on top of those lies the
Upper Level Protocols or ULP. Table 32 summarizes each FCP level.
Table 32. FCP Function Levels
FCP Level Description
FC-0
This level defines the cable, transceivers, and connector. For example, the Zeus
IOPS
3.5-inch Fibre Channel SSD uses copper cable and a 40-Pin SCA-2 connector.
FC-1
This level defines the 8B/10B encoding of the basic word in the data stream. This
encoding consists of four characters. A word contains data or contains an ordered set
that serves as control information.
FC-2
This level defines how the words are structured in frames, sequences, exchanges and
packets.
FC-3
This level defines the common services. All communication through a node passes
through the common service protocol level, allowing networking features such as
“stripping” data, and “multicasting” to many nodes.
FC-4
Maps the lower protocols to the ULPs.
ULP
This is the protocol that is transported by the Fibre Channel. For example, the
Zeus
IOPS
SSD has FCP-SCSI as its ULP.