In This Issue
Leading the Digital Revolution
15 years of DSP
Memory
Mixed-Signal and Analog
Networking
Wireless
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ThunderSWITCH II architecture unveiledIncreased bandwidth requirements will continue to drive the corporate networking environment, and Texas Instruments is responding to the need. In anticipation of gigabit demand at the corporate level, TI recently disclosed its ThunderSWITCH II architecture. The new architecture -- based on the industry-leading ThunderSWITCH 10/100 Mbps architecture -- will bring end users affordable 100/1000 Mbps connections that deliver 5 million packets per second (PPS) per device. The new architecture is a performance breakthrough, offering four to eight times the throughput of networking chips currently on the market. ThunderSWITCH II will offer unmatched flexibility and scalability with port awareness, port trunking and uplink cascading capabilities. Port awareness will allow designers to develop port density configurations of up to 640 ports. Port trunking will allow multiple 10/100 Mbps ports to be combined into a single channel, enhancing switch-to-switch communication and interoperability with the ThunderSWITCH 24/3 device (see accompanying article). Uplink cascading will enable multiple ThunderSWITCH II devices to be cascaded via a single gigabit port. The initial ThunderSWITCH product will be the TNETX4090, a nine-port, shared-memory switch chip. Using RAMBUS technology, the TNETX4090 will allow for 4 gigabits per second (Gbps) of sustainable switching bandwidth, supporting eight full-duplex 10/100 Mbps ports and one 100/1000 Mbps port. TI plans to make the device available in the second quarter of 1998.
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