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Linley Gwennap will host a panel on High-Speed Interconnect Trends at Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando. The panel will be on Wed June 27 from 1:45-3:45 pm. For more information, access the FTF web site. PMC Enters RAID Processor Market Last week, PMC-Sierra entered the crowded market for RAID processors. The company is coming in from the top with the industry’s first RAID processor (also known as RAID-on-chip or RoC) featuring 6Gbps SAS/SATA interfaces, double the rate of today’s mainstream SAS/SATA ports. The PM8010 “maxSAS SRC 8x6G” is also the first RAID controller to integrate PCI Express 2.0 interfaces. Backward compatible with first-generation PCIe, PCIe 2.0 provides twice the data rate per lane. The processor is organized into four subsystems: CPU complex, SAS/SATA controller, RAID engine, and PCI/memory interface controller with DMA engines. Connecting them is a nonblocking switch fabric. Operating at 600MHz, the CPU complex contains three scalar, multithreaded MIPS 34K cores.Two of the CPUs accelerate fundamental RAID functions, exporting these capabilities through an API to the RAID application stack running on the third CPU. Multithreading is a good fit, but a new approach, for the inherently I/O-centric processing task posed by RAID. The use of three CPUs provides more aggregate CPU power than offered by the single-core superscalar PowerPC-based RAID processors from LSI and AMCC. Intel’s IOP348, with its pair of 1.2GHz XScale CPUs, has more aggregate CPU performance, but one CPU is reserved for SAS/SATA protocol processing. The SRC 8x6G therefore provides more CPU cycles for application processing. Supporting DDR2-800, the SRC 8x6G operates its DRAM interface a notch faster than the DDR2-667 supported by the LSI SAS1078 and two grades faster than Intel’s IOP348. The prodigious 2MB of on-chip memory of the PMC-Sierra processor may alleviate use of the memory interface, as well as eliminate external memory in cost-optimized systems. Software is a critical issue for any processor, both in terms of extracting performance and for gaining market acceptance. PMC-Sierra has landed Hewlett-Packard as a lead customer, and HP will port its proprietary stack. While, the HP win is a key victory in LSI’s territory, further gains at server OEMs will require third-party software support. The SRC 8x6G provides important new hardware capabilities, which are likely to attract software suppliers. With these capabilities and the HP win, PMC-Sierra has instantly become a serious supplier of RAID processors. —Joe Additional coverage of RAID processors appears in our recent report A Guide to Storage Processors.
According to data gathered by The Linley Group, the networking silicon market grew 15% in 2006. Broadcom again was the top-ranked supplier of wired-communications ASSPs, growing at more than twice the rate of the overall industry and becoming bigger than its three largest competitors combined. Texas Instruments grew even faster than Broadcom, as success in cable modems offset share loss in DSL. Several companies grew through acquisition. Startup Cortina tripled in size by buying several product lines from Intel. PMC-Sierra bought into broadband by acquiring PON leader Passave, and Ikanos complemented its VDSL offering with ADSL chips and processors from Analog Devices. Accounting for nearly one-third of all wired communications ASSPs, sales of Ethernet components grew 14%. Most of the gains came from Gigabit Ethernet, which grew 24%. Shipments of 10 Gigabit Ethernet NICs more than doubled, and Neterion extended its lead in this market. Broadband ICs accounted for almost one-fourth of all sales and grew 20%. Sales of DSL and cable modem ICs were strong. PON IC sales grew with the overall broadband market, a lackluster performance for an emerging category. Industry revenue from network processors topped $200 million, surging 34% for the year. Intel catapulted to the top of the rankings, displacing AMCC from position it has held since pioneering the NPU category a decade ago. Agere (now LSI), Bay Microsystems, EZchip Technologies, and Wintegra all handily outpaced the industry’s growth rate. Complementary to networking silicon, high-end embedded and communications processors increased sales about 10%, with AMCC being one of the fastest growing suppliers. In wireless, baseband processors for handsets grew 15% as a surge in handset shipments was offset slightly by falling prices. Growth in smartphones and 3G handsets propelled application-processor revenue up 23%, with first-ranked TI growing even faster. This gain compensated somewhat for TI’s loss of baseband share to Qualcomm and MediaTek. —Joe Complete market share data appears in our new report “Networking Silicon Market Share 2006.”
Join us on July 18 for a Linley Tech seminar on the technologies driving the future of enterprise and data-center networks. Bob Wheeler, senior analyst with The Linley Group, will kick off the program with an overview of market, technology, equipment-design, and silicon trends for designers of enterprise and data-center networking equipment. We'll be featuring live demos such as AMCC's backplane Ethernet 10GBASE-KR ecosystem and Freescale's L7-Filter using their integrated pattern matching engine. And, you won't want to miss this outstanding lineup of technical presenters, including:
The seminar wraps up with a closing panel exploring the future of data-center networks. Following the closing panel will be a reception complete with exhibits and a raffle where we'll be giving away an iPod Nano, as well as one of The Linley Group's reports. Register now! Attendance is free to qualified attendees that pre-register. This event is sponsored by Freescale, AMCC, Solarflare, Luxtera, Mellanox, Dune, Cavium, and Fujitsu Microelectronics. To receive The Linley Wire via e-mail, click here
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