Editor: Linley
Gwennap In This Issue
If you missed our July 21 seminar on access equipment design, you should check out the presentations from Freescale, Wintegra, AMCC, Ethernity, PMC-Sierra, Cavium, and Agere as well as The Linley Group's overview of the access market. Go to our web site for a FREE copy of these presentations. Airgo Releases MIMO Derivatives Airgo Networks has released lower-cost derivatives of its first-to-market MIMO wireless-LAN chip set, sold under the True MIMO brand. The new chip sets, dubbed True G and True AG, have one transmitter and two receivers rather than the two transmitters and three receivers of the original. With only one transmitter, they are not MIMO transceivers. Therefore, the maximum raw data rate at which they transmit is 54Mbps. Reception is improved because the two receivers are used to implement maximal ratio combining (MRC). Bandwidth gains are achieved when a True G/AG client associates with a True G/AG access point and the two employ MAC enhancements such as QoS and burst acknowledgements. Airgo achieves two objectives with the new chips. First, they are lower-cost and lower-power alternatives to the original. Consequently, they are more likely to appeal to PC OEMs. Samsung has already adopted them for a couple of notebook PCs. To the extent that a sub-premium product category exists at retail, it gives Airgo a product into this category. Second, it enables Airgo to parry the efforts of competitors such as Atheros and Video54 to position their top-end products against True MIMO in the premium category. Airgo forces them into the sub-premium "enhanced WiFi" category with True G/AG and maintains the premium status of True MIMO. As a marketing exercise, the strategy mirrors Intel's success in its competition with AMD. Intel has positioned its entry-level, low-priced Celeron line against AMD's Athlon, despite AMD's efforts to position Athlon as a Pentium competitor. Similarly, Airgo's competitors are now at a disadvantage. Their best alternative is to offer a compelling alternative to True MIMO. If they are delayed, Airgo may raise the bar further with an even faster top-end design and successfully sustain its status as the sole premium supplier. Ultimately, the high-end market will gain new competition once the 802.11n standard is finalized. —Joe Complete
coverage of MIMO products from Airgo and others appears in
our forthcoming report A
Guide to Next-Generation Wireless.
Last week, Cortina Systems announced its Barcelona chip, which aggregates 24 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports to a SPI-4.2 or SPI-3 interface. Barcelona integrates 24 GbE MACs, a classification engine and policer for each port, and an aggregate shaper for the 24 ports. After classification, a queue manager buffers packets in an external 128MB FCRAM with ECC. The chip provides four priority queues per port and uses a combination of strict priority and deficit round robin to schedule traffic from its queues. Competing aggregation chips from Ample and Vitesse operate primarily at Layer 2. Barcelona improves quality of service (QoS) by performing classification on MPLS labels, IPv4/IPv6 addresses, TOS, and TCP ports. Layer 3 and 4 classification should provide better support for ACL filtering. Combining the classification with an external buffer, scheduler and shaper, the chip can be used to guarantee minimum levels of service as well as peak bandwidth. Although Barcelona's primary application is in a switch/router, it can also be used in MSPPs. In a router, Barcelona connects to either copper PHYs or SFP modules and an NPU. It integrates serdes for connecting to an SFP module. In MSPP applications, the chip connects to a VCAT framer on the system side. For these applications, Barcelona supports Martini draft and Q-in-Q for provider tagging. Barcelona's 24 SPI-4.2 channels, however, are likely to be too small for some MSPP applications. Currently sampling, the chip is scheduled to be in production by the end of this year. —Jag Additional
coverage of Cortina appears in our report A Guide
to Next-Generation Sonet Silicon.
The event will begin with an overview of security technologies (e.g., VPN, DoS, firewall, IDS/IPS, antivirus) and where they are being deployed in the network. The second session will cover integrating encryption and other security functions into existing equipment designs. The third session will discuss design issues for multifunction security systems that implement IDS/IPS, NAT, antivirus, and other functions. We'll wrap up the day with a panel on the future of security technology. We've lined up top technical speakers for the event, including Russ Dietz, CTO of Hifn; Raghib Hussain, CTO of Cavium; Bart Stevens, an R&D director at SafeNet; Oscar Mitchell, CTO of Britestream; Bill Selander, an engineering manager at Intel; Dave Lapp, a senior systems architect at Freescale; and Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group. Don't miss this opportunity to network with these industry leaders and your colleagues and get the information you need to solve your current design challenges. Sign up today at The Linley Group web site. This event is sponsored by Cavium, Hifn, Freescale, Intel,
SafeNet, and The Linley Group. The new edition of The Linley Group's report on communications processors is now complete and ready for immediate shipment. This report covers processors for low-cost SOHO and SMB networking equipment, including the hot residential-gateway market. The report covers both general-purpose communications processors such as PowerQuicc and the IXP425 as well as application-specific processors that combine a CPU with an Ethernet switch or 802.11 MAC/BB. The new edition adds coverage of the DSL-integrated processors used in DSL modems and gateways. In addition to a handy overview of DSL technologies, including ADSL2+ and VDSL2, the report covers leading and emerging products for DSL CPE, including: - Texas Instruments' AR7, including the new 7100 and 7200; The new edition also provides thorough coverage of all new communications processors released in the past year, including: - Freescale's PowerQuicc II Pro with the new Quicc Engine; Of course, the new edition has completely updated product comparisons as well as revised roadmaps and strategic analysis for each vendor in the report. Don't miss this opportunity to get up to date on this fast-paced market with a single phone call! For more information on this new report, visit our web site.
Linley's Latest Column: ExtremeTech: Chips
Ahoy - Inside a Chip Plant
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