Spurred by rapid growth in the use of networked applications such as the Internet, groupware, client/server and point-to-point communications, today's networks have an increasing need for bandwidth and bandwidth management.
TI's new ThunderSWITCH answers this call with the industry's first Ethernet switch on a chip. The device is the first offering in TI's revolutionary new ThunderSWITCH generation switch architecture.
The ThunderSWITCH architecture fully integrates into a single piece of silicon many functions typically found in separate devices. These include a high-performance switching engine with silicon-optimized network management extensions and 15 Ethernet media access controllers (MACs). This extensive integration allows designers to replace several large and expensive proprietary ASICs from existing Ethernet switch designs. For systems manufacturers, it helps simplify designs, reduces ramp-to-volume and provides potential cost savings.
Like other devices in TI's ThunderNET networking family, ThunderSWITCH is designed with flexibility and upgrade-ability in mind. The device incorporates 12 10-Base-T MACs and three 100 Mbps high-speed MACs, all of which terminate with an on-chip media independent interface (MII) for easy connection to most industry-standard physical layer devices (PHYs). The high-performance MACs can be used as a high-speed link to gigabit switching fabrics or ATM backbones, providing a migration path from existing local area networks (LAN). This capability also serves as investment protection for existing proprietary technology.
The dedicated throughput advantages switch-based architectures maintain over shared architectures is important. ThunderSWITCH's on-chip management extensions are of great value as well to network designers and management information systems (MIS) managers. The architecture is optimized to provide full visibility of all traffic through the switch. This, combined with per port statistics gathering and virtual LAN (VLAN) support, enables ThunderSWITCH to provide end-to-end network management. It also reduces overhead on the dedicated network management CPU, giving manufacturers cost reductions through lower-cost host processors.
Production samples of ThunderSWITCH are planned for 3Q96. Planned packaging for the device is a 388-pin ball grid array (BGA).
For more information on the ThunderSWITCH or any of TI's networking
products, contact TI or a local field sales office. More information
also is available by accessing TI's home page at 
http://www.ti.com.
March 1996, vol. 13, no. 2
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