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Save the date! Mark your calendars for January 31 for the Linley Tech seminar on CPU Cores and IP for Networking. This seminar is sponsored by The Linley Group, Tensilica, and SafeNet. Details of this event and additional sponsors will be announced soon. Broadcom Boosts RoboSwitch Lineup This week, Broadcom announced a new family of GbE switch chips targeting smart (web-managed) designs for the SMB market. With up to 50 GbE ports on a single chip, the RoboSwitch BCM53700 family doubles the port density of Broadcom's existing BCM5345. The new chips also integrate a 32-bit MIPS CPU, eliminating the external BCM5836 processor required in existing smart designs using RoboSwitch chips. The BCM53700 chips also include some features found in Broadcom's enterprise-class StrataXGS chips. Unlike StrataXGS, however, the new RoboSwitch chips support only GbE ports—no HiGig stacking or 10GbE uplinks—and lack Layer 3 routing. Broadcom is offering five different devices in the new family. The primary chips are the 53718 48xGbE switch, 53714 24xGbE switch, and the 53716 16xGbE switch. Broadcom also offers the 53718S and 53714S, which add a pair of GbE uplink ports and some advanced features as compared with the non-S versions. All the new chips implement a comprehensive feature set, including an 8K-entry MAC table, eight classes of service, and ACLs. The chips integrate serdes on all GbE ports for direct connection to SFP modules or Broadcom's octal GbE-over-copper PHY devices. The 5371x devices are currently sampling and are schedule for production by the end of this quarter. The 48-port 53718 carries a 10K list price of $150, about $3 per port. Broadcom bundles its WebSuperSmart management software at no additional cost. Although a major improvement for Broadcom, the new RoboSwitch does not represent a major leap in integration for the industry. Agere has offered 48-port GbE switches for about two years, but those chips lack an integrated management CPU. Vitesse offers a 24xGbE switch with an integrated ARM9 CPU and support for stacking, but the company lacks a 48-port chip. Archrival Marvell offers a feature-rich 24xGbE switch chip that supports stacking but requires an external processor. Thus, compared with competing products, the new RoboSwitch chips offer an incremental improvement in integration combined with a leading feature set for non-stackable SMB designs. Given that Broadcom is the leading vendor of GbE silicon, however, the new chips should have a significant impact on the cost and features of new smart-switch designs. —Bob Complete coverage of Broadcom's RoboSwitch and StrataXGS products appears in our report A Guide to Gigabit and 10G Ethernet Chips. This week, IDT introduced a 10G serial buffer to complement its PPS (pre processing serial RapidIO switch) announced earlier this year. This serial buffer targets base stations and other DSP-intensive applications. It includes four serial RapidIO interfaces and 18Mb memory. To scale beyond the on-chip 18Mb memory, the device provides a QDR interface for external SRAM. The buffer supports traffic up to 10Gbps and includes intelligence to monitor errors and dropped data samples. DSP clusters compare data samples over time and may perform multiple comparisons on one piece of data. Existing solutions for storing these data samples either require the data to be fragmented in multiple memories, reducing performance, or require FPGAs, increasing system cost. With the new 10G buffer, IDT provides a common memory for the DSP cluster. The companion PPS chip offloads the DSPs and allows multiples DSPs to share the common buffer. IDT has embarked on a path to provide strategic products for base stations and other DSP cluster applications such as medical imaging. The first product, PPS, was a switch that is capable of offloading DSPs for improved system performance. The second chip aims to further improve performance and reduce cost. The company claims to have design wins for these products at most of the major base station OEMs. If it qualifies these devices for production in 2007, IDT will have taken another step in moving from commodity vendor to a strategic supplier. —Jag Coverage of IDT's RapidIO chips appears in our report A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects.
Cisco made it official this week by announcing its rumored acquisition of Greenfield Networks. Although financial terms were not disclosed, we believe Cisco paid far less than the $48 million Greenfield had raised since its inception, leaving investors at a loss. Most of Greenfield's 60-odd employees will join Cisco, bringing many of them full circle. As an OEM, Cisco will withdraw the startup's products from the merchant market, leaving customers like Huawei-3Com (H3C) high and dry. It is unclear whether Cisco will use Greenfield's Packetry chip set in new products or simply reuse some of the startup's IP. After designing Catalyst switches at Cisco, which they joined as part of the Grand Junction acquisition, Kamran Torabi and Harish Devanagondi helped found Greenfield in early 2001. Three years later, Greenfield sampled its first product, which targeted metro-Ethernet switches and high-end enterprise switches. The Packetry three-chip set included a configurable packet processor, a traffic manager, and an optional multiplexer for oversubscribed configurations. During 4Q05, Greenfield sampled the Packetry II chip set, which improved integration rela¬tive to the first-generation product and added carrier-class features. But Greenfield needed to raise additional funding to continue operating. Like its NPU-startup competitors, Greenfield faced a long slow road to profitability, and its investors apparently lost patience. By acquiring Greenfield, Cisco netted an intact design team and some valuable intellectual property. The fact that an upstart competitor like H3C lost its high-end switch product in the process was just gravy. —Bob Complete coverage of Greenfield's Packetry chip set appears in our report A Guide to Gigabit and 10G Ethernet Chips. Last week, Altera unveiled Stratix III, the company's new top-end FPGA. Samples will not be available in 3Q07, but customers can begin designs targeting the new device by using Altera's latest design software. Stratix III is faster and denser than Stratix II, providing up to 338,000 equivalent logic elements, 17 megabits of on-chip memory, and 896 18x18 multipliers. More significantly, Altera has concentrated on power management. To reduce power, Stratix III is qualified to operate at either 0.9V or 1.1V. Designers can also configure individual logic, DSP, and memory blocks to operate in either high-speed or low-power modes. By enabling only blocks in a design's critical path to operate in high-speed mode, this method saves power while preserving performance. With rising non-recurring engineering costs and increasingly capable FPGAs becoming available, we expect more networking ASIC/ASSP designers to turn toward using advanced FPGAs in lieu of spinning custom designs. For more coverage of FPGAs, download the proceedings from our recent seminar on Programmable Devices for Networking System Design. A Guide to Access Processors is now available for immediate delivery. Get in-depth analysis of access NPUs, the chips found in aggregation equipment such as DSLAMs, multiservice platforms, and mobile infrastructure. For more information, visit our web site. New Report: Guide to Broadband Inteface Chips The shift to triple-play services continues to drive bandwidth demands in broadband. Video-over-IP (Internet protocol) continues to fuel significant changes in the access network as both cable companies and carriers compete in offering a full range of services to remain competitive. A Guide to Broadband Interface Chips delivers a comprehensive analysis of the major vendors offering products for VDSL2, EPON, GPON. Vendors for passive optical networks include Broadlight, Centillium, Conexant, Freescale, Immenstar, PMC-Sierra (Passave), and Teknovus. Also covered are leading VDSL2 vendors Broadcom, Centillium, Conexant, Infineon, and Ikanos. We examine the VDSL2 and PON silicon markets, applications, and vendors as we look at silicon for both ends of the wire: CO and CPE applications. To meet the rapid changes in the industry, new standards have been developed for enabling these services, making it a challenge to keep current on the emerging trends and technologies. "A Guide to Broadband Interface Chips" provides the clear explanations you need to understand this market. The report provides background on these technologies, with in-depth coverage of the chip vendors in each segment, including product details and roadmap information where available. We compare the available solutions and pick our winners for each segment. Only The Linley Group's unique technology analysis can provide this forward-looking view. Order by December 8 to get a special prepublication discount. For more information on this new edition, visit our web site. To receive The Linley Wire via e-mail, click here
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