A buffet of presentations covering video processing, processors and parallel processing, memory technologies, communications, and novel silicon applications is sure to keep just about every attendee's plate full at this year's Hot Chips show. Overall, 27 presentations, two keynote addresses, two tutorials, and two panels are on tap (see the table)for Aug. 20-22 at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif.
Justin Rattner, chief technology officer and Senior Fellow of Intel, will chair the first panel, discussing "cool codes." The second panel will cover collaborative innovation, delivered by Bernard Meyerson, Fellow, vice president of strategic alliances, and chief technologist for IBM's Systems & Technology Group. The two tutorials will cover multicore programming and wireless challenges and opportunities in the home.
But that's not all. Here's a look at six of the latest "hot chips" that give the show its name.
NETWORK PROCESSORS If you're looking for a chip that bundles service solutions such as IP, ATM, Ethernet, MPLS, and Frame Relay at GbE, OC-48c, and OC-192c speeds, consider the Agere APP300 programmable network processor (Fig. 1). It handles layer 2 through 7 protocol processing, buffer management, traffic shaping, data modification, and per-flow policing.
Also, the APP300 offers wired and wireless communications by working with physical interface devices and the backplane fabric. It targets various OEM systems, including routers, switches, DLSAMs, Wireless BTS, RNC, and Gateway systems.
"The niche applications for the Agere chip include wireline and wireless multiservice access equipment," says Charlie Hartley, an Agere spokesman. "These include digital subscriber-line access multiplexers and third-generation wireless basestations."
The APP300 handles data streams from industry-standard interfaces and then analyzes the data to classify the frames or cells before packet transformation and transmission. It also supports two datapath interfaces that may be configured into five different ports, with each port supporting multiple standards. On top of that, the APP300 provides:
Support for 802.1d/s/w/Q/P/ad
Intelligent broadcast/multicast filtering
ATM switching
VCI/VPI merge
Policing
PPP over Ethernet/ATM (PPPoE/A)
IGMP snooping
DiffServ queuing using DSCP
Network address translation (NAT)
Congestion-management EPD and PPD
OAM per 1.610 standard.
The APP300 can be updated as new protocols and applications become available. To support application development, Agere provides a combination of a high-level programming language, application-level application programming interface (API), reference code library, and development suite. The suite includes a simulator, a traffic generator, and a debugger. Simultaneous hardware and software design is possible. The APP300 devices range in price from $35 to $200 in volume lots.
If you require a large number of high-speed Ethernet interfaces, there's the FocalPoint chip from Fulcrum Microsystems. The FM2224 comes standard with 24 XAUI (CX4) independent Ethernet interfaces (Fig. 2). Each interface supports the 10G, 2.5G, 1G, 100M, and 10M modes. Based on 130-nm process technology, the FocalPoint chips also offer:
Low latency (200 ns ball to ball)
Layer 2 switching capabilities
Support for 802.1P/Q/D/X/s/w, 802.3ad/x standards
Queue management
Packet filtering and monitoring
Several configuration modes
Power consumption that's less than 150 mW/Gbits/s/active interface.
The FM2224 can be used as the backplane fabric or system-level interconnect for a variety of platforms and applications, including:
Blade computer backplane fabric
Cluster interconnect
NAS interconnect
Workgroup and enterprise 1G Ethernet aggregator
ATCA platform backplane fabric.
"We're seeing tremendous interest in our FocalPoint Ethernet switch chip family," says Mike Zeile, vice president of marketing for Fulcrum Microsystems. "FocalPoint's combination of low latency, high throughput, and high port density has really struck a chord with computing and storage equipment providers who now consider 10G Ethernet the interconnect technology of choice for their next-generation data center deployments."
Fulcrum offers the FM2224 as part of an integrated evaluation platform to help accelerate design-in of the device. The platform comes standard with 24 CX4 connectors in a 1U chassis. The list price for the FM2224 is $450 in quantities of 5000 units.
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