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New Linley Tech Seminar on Enterprise & Data Center Networking Save the date! Mark your calendars for July 18 for a Linley Tech seminar on the technologies driving the future of enterprise and data-center networks. This event will cover the newest chips and technologies for switching and server connectivity. Details on this event will be announced soon. Sponsored by Freescale, AMCC, Solarflare, Luxtera, Mellanox, Dune, Cavium, Fujitsu, and The Linley Group. If you missed last week's seminar on High-Speed Interconnects, you can now download the proceedings from the event, which include slides from all speakers. We have added transcripts of each of the panel discussions, so you can see what the experts had to say during these Q&A sessions. For a free copy of this material, access our web site. Teranetics Announces 10GBase-T PHY Last week, Teranetics announced the industry's first single-chip PHY for 10G Ethernet over copper (10GBase-T). The TN1010 chip conforms to the IEEE 802.3an specification, which requires a reach of 100m using Cat6A/Cat7 wiring and up to 55m using Cat 6 wiring. Sampling since November 2006, the device uses a 25mm package and is fabricated in 130nm CMOS. The TN1010 is unique in supporting autonegotiation between 10Gbps and 1Gbps. The device uses a single XAUI lane to support 1Gbps. The first applications for the TN1010 include dual-port NICs, switches, and storage systems. Chelsio and Tehuti have already announced products using the Teranetics chip, and we expect several other major vendors of switches and NICs to follow in the next few months. Although the power dissipation of the TN1010 is around 10W, Teranetics has demonstrated the PHY in Xenpak and X2 modules plugged into existing switches and dual-port NICs. Although X2 modules require lower power than 10W, the voltage and current specifications of these modules facilitate use of the TN1010. Teranetics has demonstrated the PHY in multi-port 10GbE line cards and 10GbE pizza-box switches. Remarkably, the 60-employee startup has beaten out major vendors like Broadcom and Marvell to developing a single-chip 10GBase-T PHY. The company, however, does have competition from Solarflare, which was the first vendor to announce and sample a 10GBase-T solution. Solarflare additionally offers 10GbE controllers for a complete NIC solution. By developing a single chip, however, Teranetics has landed the majority of the first wave of designs. By using 65nm process technology, Teranetics should be able to reduce power dissipation – it has promised to sample a 5W device by 2008. Although the first wave of 10GBase-T PHYs should ship in significant volumes, it will be the second generation of devices that ramps up to millions of 10GBase-T ports. —Jag Both Teranetics and Solarflare presented at our recent High-Speed Interconnect seminar; download their presentations here.
This week, Broadcom announced its first NIC/LOM chip for 10G Ethernet (10GbE). Like Broadcom's Gigabit Ethernet converged-NIC (C-NIC) chips, the new BCM57710 will support TCP Chimney, iSCSI, and RDMA (or iWARP). As we expect from Broadcom, the 57710 is highly integrated, packing dual 10GbE ports for redundancy, integrated CX4/KX4 PHYs, and a PCI Express x8 interface. The chip also includes an undisclosed, but probably large, amount of on-chip memory. This allows the 57710 to support a large number of active flows without external memories of any kind. To minimize both latency and buffer-memory requirements, Broadcom employed a cut-through architecture. Broadcom expects the chip, which is currently sampling, to reach production in 4Q07. Meanwhile, startup NetEffect announced production availability of its second-generation 10GbE NICs at the end of April. Although the company announced only board-level products, the NE020 family is built around NetEffect's second-generation controller chip. With dual CX4-capable network ports and a PCIe x8 interface, NetEffect's chip offers a similar level of integration to Broadcom's 57710. The NetEffect design also uses cut-through operation for RDMA traffic. Unlike Broadcom, however, NetEffect requires external DRAM to buffer other traffic. The NE020 currently supports TCP Chimney and RDMA; iSCSI drivers are due in 2H07. Other vendors, including Chelsio and NetXen, offer converged, or "unified wire", 10GbE NICs or controller chips that support TCP offload, iSCSI, and RDMA. Although late to market, Broadcom is the leading vendor of GbE controllers and has strong relationships with leading server OEMs. For blade servers, Broadcom is unique in offering complementary 10GbE switch chips for the backplane fabric. NetEffect stands out with mature RDMA support, which is important for high-performance computing applications. Due to the large amount of software required to support multiple offloads across multiple operating systems, it will be difficult even for Broadcom to offer a truly universal 10GbE product. —Bob Complete coverage of 10GbE controllers and NICs appears in our report A Guide to Gigabit and 10G Ethernet Chips.Last week, Conexant announced its Xenon-IIIG product family, which consists of the CX95202 GPON controller and the CX95203 EPON controller. The two devices integrate functions for the PON MAC and residential gateway. Although Conexant plans to offer OLT devices, it currently uses FPGAs for the OLT. To ensure interoperability, the company has conducted interoperability tests with products from 15 vendors, including Alcatel. The two ONU devices use a common core but different interfaces for the specific network. A shared-memory architecture ensures wire-speed performance. The common core consists of an ARM processor for control functions, packet processor for the data path, and DSP for VoIP. The DSP can support 4 VoIP channels with three-way calling. For the client interfaces, each device offers two MII and three GMII ports for Ethernet and a PCI interface for other home-connectivity technologies such as MoCA, HomePNA, and HomePlug. Conexant's controllers are the first to offer comprehensive Layer 3 gateway functions, such as IP routing and NAT. They perform Layer 2 (802.1D) bridging with 64 VLAN tags and can classify data using Layer 2 or Layer 3 tags. Each device uses 802.3 flow control and provides QoS using up to eight queues based on 802.1p, ToS, or DiffServ. Each queue can be mapped onto a LLID (logical link ID) for EPON or onto a T-CONT (traffic container) for GPON. The EPON product additionally supports China Telecom security extensions. Although the PON market is relatively small, it has attracted a large number of players. PMC-Sierra continues to be the market leader with its EPON shipments. Teknovus and Cortina (formerly Immenstar) ship smaller volumes. Conexant joins BroadLight and Freescale in the GPON market. Because of entrenched vendors in the existing EPON markets, Conexant must target developing regions such as China. To win designs against this crowded field, Conexant can promote a common software interface across GPON, EPON, and its popular DSL products. —Jag Additional
coverage of Conexant appears in our report A Guide
to Broadband Interface Chips. Last week, Xelerated announced an impressive $23 million round of funding. The round was led by a Swedish pension fund and included existing venture investors Atlas Venture, Alta Partners, Accel Partners and Amadeus Capital. Xelerated will use the new funding to expand its sales and support capabilities as well as to complete development of its X12 next-generation NPU. The new funding follows announcements of design wins at Fujitsu, Huawei, and ZTE. —Bob
A Guide to Security Processors and Accelerators has been has been completely restructured to provide in-depth coverage of processors that integrate high-speed security functions such as encryption, compression, and content inspection. This new breed of processors takes integration to the next level by integrating one or more CPUs, memory and I/O controllers, and special-purpose engines for security functions. These integrated security processors are replacing the combination of a standard processor plus accelerator for many new designs. Here are some of the many highlights from this report:
In addition, the report covers IPSec and SSL accelerators (coprocessors) from Broadcom, Hifn, and SafeNet as well as content-inspection accelerators from Tarari, NetLogic, and Sensory Networks. With one report, you can quickly compare the key vendors and their products and accelerate your selection process. Order by May 31 to take advantage of the prepublication price. For further details, visit our web site.
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