Interlaken is a royalty-free interconnect

Electrical connection

An electrical connection between discrete points allows the flow of electrons . A pair of connections is needed for a circuit.Between points with a low voltage difference, direct current can be controlled by a switch...

 protocol

Communications protocol

A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...

.

It was invented by Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...

 and Cortina Systems

Cortina Systems

Cortina Systems, Inc. is a supplier of integrated circuits for broadband communications founded in 2001. It is based in California.- History :...

 in 2006, optimized for high-bandwidth and reliable packet transfers. It builds on the channelization and per channel flow control features of SPI-4.2

SPI-4.2

SPI-4.2 is a version of the System Packet Interface published by the Optical Internetworking Forum. It was designed to be used in systems that support OC-192 SONET interfaces and is sometimes used in 10 Gigabit Ethernet based systems....

, while reducing the number of integrated circuit

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

 (chip) I/O

I/O

I/O may refer to:* Input/output, a system of communication for information processing systems* Input-output model, an economic model of flow prediction between sectors...

 pins by using high speed SerDes

SerDes

A Serializer/Deserializer is a pair of functional blocks commonly used in high speed communications to compensate for limited input/output. These blocks convert data between serial data and parallel interfaces in each direction...

 technology. Bundles of serial links create a logical connection between components with multiple channels, backpressure capability, and data-integrity protection to boost the performance of communications equipment. Interlaken manages speeds of up to 6 Gbit/s per pin (lane) and large numbers of lanes can form an Interlaken interface. It was designed to handle high-speed (10 Gigabit Ethernet

10 Gigabit Ethernet

The 10 gigabit Ethernet computer networking standard was first published in 2002. It defines a version of Ethernet with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s , ten times faster than gigabit Ethernet.10 gigabit Ethernet defines only full duplex point to point links which are generally connected by...

, 100 gigabit Ethernet

100 Gigabit Ethernet

40 Gigabit Ethernet, or 40GbE, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, or 100GbE, are high-speed computer network standards developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . They support sending Ethernet frames at 40 and 100 gigabits per second over multiple 10 Gbit/s or 25 Gbit/s lanes...

 and beyond) computer network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

connections.

An alliance was formed in 2007.