Editor: Linley
Gwennap In This Issue
Infineon Acquires CPE Silicon Vendor ADMtek In January, Infineon announced the acquisition of Taiwan-based CPE-silicon vendor ADMtek for 80 million euros. The acquisition complements Infineon's strong position in central-office communications silicon with ADMtek's CPE-targeted product line, which includes Ethernet MACs, PHYs, and switches; wireless MAC/baseband and integrated access-point devices; and home-gateway processors. Infineon gains a new Hsinchu design center with a favorable cost structure and close proximity to the Taiwanese ODMs that supply broadband modem and router equipment. Infineon's EasyPort communications processors, based on the MIPS5Kc 64-bit core, are not cost-competitive in the CPE space. It is likely that Infineon will adopt the ADMtek home-gateway processor - which incorporates a 32-bit MIPS 4Kc core - as the basis for a revamped line of CPE communications processors. ADMtek's WLAN MAC devices also complement Infineon's dual-band radio and baseband processor, developed jointly with Agere. Already equipped with DSL and voice-over-packet technology prior to the acquisition, Infineon now has all the technology elements necessary to spin a new line of CPE-targeted communications processors. We expect Infineon to accelerate the deployment of new processors integrating DSL modems, WLAN support, and, eventually, voice-over-packet features, challenging today's dominant CPE-silicon vendors Conexant and Texas Instruments. —SI Complete
coverage of Infineon's communications processors appears in our
report "A Guide
to Communications Processors."
Mellanox Tailors InfiniBand for PCI Express For 2004 designs, InfiniBand is the best alternative for high performance computing in servers, embedded systems, and storage systems. Compared to proprietary multiprocessor systems, InfiniBand enables similar performance at a fraction of the cost. Alternatives such as Advanced Switching and Ethernet are either not ready or carry significant overhead. The benefits of InfiniBand have pulled in support from major industry players such as Oracle, IBM, Sun, SGI, HP, Apple, and Fujitsu. With more than 200,000 ports shipped, Mellanox is the leading supplier of InfiniBand silicon. This week, Mellanox announced its third-generation InfiniBand components, which use PCI Express. The third-generation InfiniHost III family consists of a PCI Express-to-InfiniBand bridge and an InfiniBand switch. The bridge chip, or Host Channel Adapter (HCA), bridges an eight-lane PCI Express interface to dual 10Gbps InfiniBand links. It includes support for InfiniBand features such as remote DMA (RDMA). The switch supports 24 10Gbps ports or 8 30Gbps ports. The switch supports nine virtual lanes and mechanisms to provide QoS. Both components are sampling to OEMs. Mellanox is validating its latest chipset with Intel, which should ensure compatibility with Pentium 4 and PCI Express platforms. InfiniBand provides
a high-performance low-cost solution for high-end multiprocessing,
is available today, and has support from the major players in the
high-performance computing industry. With its PCI Express HCA, Mellanox
has taken a time-to-market lead, which should help the company continue
to grow its port shipments through 2004 and 2005. —JB News in Brief Last week Wintegra announced the production availability of its WIN787 and WIN747 access processors. These devices, which target IP-DSLAM applications, feature dual GbE MACs, 16 TDM ports, and Utopia and POS ports with multi-PHY capability expanded to 127 channels. Both processors include a MIPS5Kc control-plane processor and multiple packet engines for the data plane (four for the 787 and two for the 747) and ship with Wintegra's production-ready suite of dataplane firmware for IP-DSLAMs. —SI Complete coverage of Wintegra's WinPath processors appears in our report "A Guide to Communications Processors." On February 2nd, PMC-Sierra announced the industry's first 6.25Gbps transceiver that complies with the Optical Internetworking Forum's (OIF) long-reach CEI specification. The PM8359 is a quad 6.125Gbps serdes transceiver suitable for backplane applications in communication switches and networked storage systems. The PM8359 translates signals between eight 3.125Gbps serial links and four 6.25Gbps serial links. It uses adaptive decision feedback equalizers to maintain signal integrity and a bit-error rate of 10E-13. For backward compatibility with older systems, the chip offers half and quarter rate operation modes. Manufactured on TSMC's 0.13-micron process, the new transceiver is currently sampling. Although the market for the PM8359 is small, PMC can establish a presence that competitors will find difficult to counter as demand increases. —JB Coverage of PMC-Sierra's backplane-serdes products appears in our report "A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects."
“A Guide to Gigabit Ethernet Silicon” is the first report to provide in-depth technology analysis of the products and vendors in the burgeoning enterprise market for Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). The report breaks this market into three key segments:
The report provides thorough coverage of vendors with products in multiple segments: Broadcom, Marvell, and Vitesse/Cicada. Also included is coverage of switch chips from ASIX, F3, Fujitsu, IC Plus and SwitchCore; PHY chips from Agere, Mysticom, and National Semiconductor; and controller products from Intel, Realtek, and VIA. Which chips will win designs and why? How will these vendors be positioned as GbE takes off? Only The Linley Group's unique technology analysis can provide this forward-looking view. Unlike typical market research, this report provides technology analysis rather than quantitative market data. Order by February 28, 2004 to get a special prepublication discount. For more information on this new report, visit our web site.
EE Times: Itanium Not Living Up to Intel's Promise
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