Description¶

White Rabbit (WR) is a solution to the generic problem of transferring data in a fast, deterministic and safe manner. Although its initial scope is mainly targeted at timing systems for experimental physics facilities, care has been taken to come up with a solution which is as generic as possible. The aim is to be able to synchronize ~1000 nodes with sub-ns accuracy over fiber and copper lengths of up to 10 km. The main technologies used are physical layer syntonization (clock recovery) and PTP (IEEE 1588). Compliance with established standards such as Ethernet and PTP is a key goal of the project.
This OHR project is both the home of the hardware design for the White Rabbit switch (fully open hardware licensed under the CERN Open Hardware Licence) and an umbrella for general WR-related documents and discussion. In particular, the publications page contains key working documents such as the White Rabbit specification as well as publications, presentations and other useful material. Several potential users have expressed interest in WR, and some commercial companies are collaborating in design tasks and will commercialize the results.

The WR switch software is dealt with in a separate subproject.

Seven Solutions, one of the commercial companies involved, has prepared a nice web page about WR and other associated developments.

Work so far¶

Documentation¶

• White Rabbit related papers
• Which SFP transceiver and fibre type to use for White Rabbit
• White Rabbit Node Reference design