Editor: Linley
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Time is running out and space is limited--register this week to reserve your place! On March 29, The Linley Group will host a free one-day seminar packed with the latest information on high-end switch/router design. Hear industry experts presenting advanced solutions for data-plane and control-plane applications. Qualified attendees earn FREE admission, courtesy of our sponsors Freescale, AMCC, EZchip, Xilinx, Hifn, and Micron. For a complete program listing and registration information, visit our web site. Broadcom Samples 20-port 10GbE Switch Chip This week, Broadcom announced its first high-density 10GbE switch chips. Part of the StrataXGS III Layer 3 switch family, the new 800 series chips (BCM568xx) represent a dramatic increase in integration over Broadcom's existing BCM56501 4x10GbE switch chip. The underlying design of the new BCM568xx devices is a 200Gbps shared-memory switch with 20 ports that can be configured as 10GbE or HiGig/HiGig+/HiGig2. HiGig2 is a new flavor of Broadcom's proprietary stacking interface that operates at 13Gbps. As with the 565xx devices, the new 568xx chips support both XAUI and CX4 in 10GbE mode. Because of the bandwidth tradeoff between 10GbE and HiGig2 ports, Broadcom offers two high-end versions of the new switch: the 56800 is a 20x10GbE device, while the 56801 has ten 10GbE ports plus eight ports that support 10GbE or HiGig2 operation. The 56800 is intended for pizza-box switch designs and blade-server backplanes. For chassis-switch designs, the 56801 can be used to create a 10x10GbE wire-speed line card with eight 13Gbps HiGig2 ports connecting to the backplane. For lower-density designs, Broadcom also offers 12x10GbE (56803) and 16x10GbE (56802) variants. The 568xx devices are currently sampling and are priced at less than $30 per 10GbE port. Broadcom is not first to market a 10GbE switch-on-a-chip device, nor does it offer the highest density 10GbE switch; Fujitsu and Fulcrum Microsystems, respectively, take those honors. But Broadcom is the first incumbent Ethernet vendor to offer such a device, and the 568xx chips are unique in their support for stacking and Layer 3 switching. With a differentiated product and a strong base of GbE designs at Tier One OEMs, Broadcom should easily extend its GbE leadership into the market for 10GbE switch chips. —Bob Complete coverage of Broadcom's StrataXGS products
appears in our report A Guide to Gigabit and 10G Ethernet Silicon. Last month, Tundra Semiconductor launched its third generation of Serial RapidIO switch chips and created an interoperability lab for component manufacturers and OEMs. Targeting ATCA and MicroTCA chassis, the Tsi578 chip conforms to the latest release (v1.3) of the Serial RapidIO specification. With an aggregate capacity of 80Gbps, the Tsi578 can support up to 8 four-lane ports or 16 single-lane ports. Each lane operates at a date rate of up to 3.125Gbps. The Tsi578 includes an internal switch fabric to switch among its ports. For each port, the Tsi578 switches packets using either a store-and forward mode or a cut-through mode. Compared to earlier Serial RapidIO switches from Tundra, the Tsi578 adds support for multicast, improves traffic management, and reduces power dissipation. The switch can queue up to 16 full RapidIO packets from the point where a packet enters the switch to the exit, where each of the ingress and egress ports has eight packet buffers. These prevent head-of-line blocking and allow multiple ingress ports to target a common egress port. The Tsi578 switch can be used in systems for wireless infrastructure, access equipment, and storage. The switch most often connects to Texas Instruments DSPs, Freescale PowerQuicc and PowerPC processors, and FPGAs from Xilinx and Altera. Tundra has announced a volume price of less than $99 and plans to sample the Tsi578 in August 2006. Also last month, Tundra set up an interoperability lab for third parties to test interoperability of their RapidIO products. Being the first vendor with RapidIO switches, Tundra is in a unique position to create such a facility. Silicon vendors, FPGA vendors, and OEMs of RapidIO products are likely to welcome the launch of this lab. This RapidIOlab (RIOLAB) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tundra. The company plans to offset costs of operation with fees for testing third-party products. Tundra continues to lead the RapidIO market with new products and the broadest line of Serial RapidIO switches. In 2006, Tundra will face competition for the first time. The bigger concern for Tundra, however, will be to expand the market for RapidIO products. RIOLAB should assure OEMs of getting interoperable RapidIO products from multiple vendors. This degree of safety should convince more OEMs to adopt the RapidIO architecture. —Jag Tundra's
new RapidIO products will be covered in an upcoming edition
of A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects.
According to data gathered by The Linley Group, the networking semiconductor market grew a modest four percent in 2005. Broadcom captured about one fifth of the market. The underlying landscape of competitors and product markets is far more complex, however, than suggested by the stability of the market in aggregate. Some technologies are becoming outmoded, while others are growing. Some vendors took advantage of emerging technologies, while others capitalized on stable markets for mature technologies. Tracking the overall trend, sales of Ethernet ICs increased about three percent. Sales of chips for Gigabit Ethernet switching, however, shot up as enterprises increased GbE deployment. GbE switch and PHY sales grew about 55% and 30% in 2005. The big beneficiary of increased GbE switch deployment was Broadcom, which captured about two-thirds of the merchant GbE switch IC market and a similar share of the PHY market. 2005 DSL chip sales were about even with 2004. Here, too, Broadcom emerged as a winner, growing its revenue 80% and surpassing Infineon to become the number three supplier. This growth came at the expense of STMicroelectronics, which saw its DSL sales fall by 45%. Despite the decline, ST managed to stay ahead of Ikanos, which gained share based on its strength in the emerging VDSL market. Passive optical networking (PON), an alternative to DSL, more than doubled its industry revenue in 2005, benefiting leading supplier Passave, which held more than 50% market share. At only $80 million, however, the PON IC market is less than one-tenth the size of the DSL market. The network-processor industry was especially chaotic, with half of the top-ten suppliers selling less in 2005 than in 2004 and the other half increasing sales. Despite a dramatic decline in revenue, AMCC maintained its number one position, just above Intel. AMCC's revenue decline was matched by Agere's increase, which led to Agere becoming the third-largest NPU supplier. Wintegra's revenue grew even more, and the access NPU pioneer is now the fourth largest supplier in the $176 million NPU market. The Linley Group report Networking Silicon Market Share 2005 provides revenue and market-share estimates for each of the product markets discussed above as well as network search engines, interconnect ASSPs, high-end embedded CPUs, voice-over-packet processors, SONET, ATM, and T/E carrier ICs. The report is available in either a single or corporate license. —Joe Order by April 7 and save $300 on
Networking Silicon Market Share 2005. For more information,
visit our web site. Linley Live and in Person The Microprocessor Summit, part of Embedded Systems Conference, will be held Monday, April 3 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Our own Linley Gwennap will chair the High-End Processor breakout session. This session examines processors designed to deliver performance for the most demanding embedded applications—such as security, networking, and communications infrastructure. ESC Silicon Valley runs April 3-7 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. Register by March 30 with priority code LGRP for a $400 discount. Embedded Systems Conference . To receive The Linley Wire via e-mail, click here
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