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Save the date! Mark your calendars for September 21 for the Linley Tech seminar on Embedded Network Security Design. This seminar is sponsored by The Linley Group, Freescale, AMCC, SafeNet, Cavium, Hifn, Sensory, and Tarari. Details of this event will be announced soon. Emerging from stealth mode, Cswitch unveiled its plan to deploy a new type of programmable-logic device that is extensively optimized for packet processing and other communications functions. By combining hard-wired logic blocks with programmable gates, the startup hopes to take share from traditional FPGAs. To simplify its customers’ design task, Cswitch has partnered with Magma, which will deliver and support a version of its popular design tool that includes a Cswitch back end. The startup plans to sample its first chips around the end of this year. The new architecture includes dedicated packet parsers that can be programmed to extract data from packet headers. Hard-wired arithmetic units can perform packet editing. Built-in CAMs can be configured in binary or ternary modes. For storing tables and buffers, the architecture includes a sizable dual-port RAM as well as a larger amount of single-port RAM. All of this dedicated logic is wrapped up with arrays of standard four-input LUTs, similar to those in common FPGAs, and connected via a high-speed point-to-point interconnect. The chip also embeds DRAM controllers, Ethernet and Fibre Channel MACs, and serdes that operate at up to 6.4Gbps. These serdes can support PCI Express, XAUI, GbE, FC, and other high-speed interfaces. Compared with a standard FPGA design, dedicated logic can increase performance by up to 10x or reduce power dissipation by a similar factor. The Cswitch approach provides a good deal of configurability along with a large number of FPGA-type gates for miscellaneous functions. If Cswitch can deliver on its promises, its unique architecture should be attractive to networking-equipment designers. —Linley
According to research by The Linley Group, the top 10 suppliers of wired communications ASSPs account for 70% of the total market. Counter to the conventional wisdom that smaller companies grow at faster rates than larger companies, in 2005, the top-10 suppliers grew faster than the industry as a whole.
Table 1 ranks the top-10 suppliers of wired communications ASSPs by 2005 revenue. The largest, Broadcom, was also the fastest growing because of share gains in Ethernet and DSL. Conexant was the second largest, benefiting from a stabilizing broadband business and sales of analog modem chips. Intel fell a notch to fourth place because of sliding sales of Ethernet client chips, putting Infineon in third. Rounding out the top five was TI, growing because of gains in cable-modem ICs. The gains by large companies were due to strong growth in broadband ICs, tempered by stagnant Ethernet revenue. As Table 2 shows, Ethernet and broadband together account for about half of the industry’s sales. The other categories that we track in detail each had revenue of less than $300 million.
Network-processor
sales increased by $12 million in 2005. Their success, in part,
comes at the expense of ATM IC sales,
which fell $21 million.
Sales of
Layer 2 Sonet/SDH and RPR devices rebounded, however. Search engine
sales climbed because of greater use of these devices in switches and
routers. Another
bright spot was encryption processors, as growth in IPSec acceleration
for VPN systems
grew along with SSL acceleration.
Our communications-processor category combines sales from certain wired communications ASSPs as well as general-purpose communications processors. The demand for processors with integrated broadband interfaces propelled sales of communications processors upward by 27% to nearly $1.6 billion. —Joe Our report “Networking
Silicon Market Share 2005” provides vendor revenue for
each category and ranks the top 25 suppliers of wired communications
ASSPs.
Strong growth for data-center applications, including blade servers and storage-networking equipment, is fueling demand for new switching solutions. Backplane switches for networking application have traditionally been proprietary ASICs, leaving little room for merchant vendors. In contrast, designers of data-center equipment want standard and converged solutions for the backplane. Consequently, several vendors are developing backplane switches specifically for data-center applications. A Guide to Backplane Switch Chips provides extensive coverage of backplane switches and fabrics. Traditional switch fabrics primarily target networking applications, while new backplane switch chips target data-center applications. The report covers switch chips from Fulcrum Microsystems, StarGen, Fujitsu, and NextIO as well as new products from Enigma, PMC-Sierra, and Mercury Systems. It also covers proprietary switches, RapidIO switches, and ASI switches as well as Ethernet switches for the backplane. In addition, the report provides background on data-center equipment such as blade servers and technologies such as Ethernet over the backplane. This report will bring you up to date on the traditional fabric vendors and their products, including the latest information on acquisitions and consolidations. The report concludes with a competitive analysis of different types of switches and fabrics. Order by August 25 to take advantage of a special prepublication discount. For more information on this report, visit our web site. Did you know that The Linley Group now publishes a newsletter focused on semiconductors for consumer electronics? Here are headlines from the latest edition of Linley on CE:
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