TI Announces Industry's First 10/100 Ethernet Switch-on-a-Chip

DALLAS (Sept. 9, 1996) -- The first of a family of 10/100 Mbps Ethernet single-chip network switching solutions was announced today by Texas Instruments (TI). Dubbed the TNETX3150, the new device is based on TI's ThunderSWITCH scalable switching architecture. The TNETX3150 is designed for performance, flexibility and affordability, enabling new, extensible designs and reducing costs for a wide variety of network switching equipment.

"By lowering the price per port of switches to that of repeaters, ThunderSWITCH-based switches can now economically replace shared media devices, bringing the benefits of increased bandwidth right to the desktop," said Kurt Eckles, TI's marketing manager for the ThunderSWITCH family. "To keep desktop Ethernet switching affordable, TI plans additions to its switching family, including single-chip solutions for advanced 10/100 switching configurations. TI will offer standard products and ASIC core solutions to extend the current architecture in the 100 Mb and 1 Gb areas. TI is also expanding its PHY product line into the 10/100 space."

The new ThunderSWITCH device integrates into a single IC all the key components used in switch designs, saving board space and significantly reducing component costs, both of which reduce price per port and increase performance. The device connects directly to both the traditional 10Base-T and high-speed 100Base-T Ethernet protocols. In addition, the 'X3150 builds in hardware support for many of the software network management applications that are becoming increasingly important in networking products. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of desktop, workgroup and backbone switches can all benefit from the versatility and ease of upgrade the product offers.

The high level of integration in the ThunderSWITCH architecture simplifies design complexity and helps shorten development times for OEMs. In addition, ThunderSWITCH offers OEMs and information systems managers (MIS) a wide latitude of application alternatives. Besides its targeted low-cost desktop switching application, it can be utilized as a desktop switching card within high-speed servers, remote-access servers and as a front end on routers.

At the heart of the ThunderSWITCH architecture is a high-performance data throughput engine that supports an aggregate bandwidth of 3.2 gigabits per second (Gbps). In addition, the TNETX3150 fully integrates 12 10Base-T media access controllers (MACs) and three 10/100Base-T MACs, one of which supports 400 Mbps throughput.

ThunderSWITCH chips can be cascaded via the high-speed MACs, creating desktop switches with 24 10Base-T ports and 2 10/100Base-T ports. All MACs are terminated with media-independent interfaces (MIIs) using the 7 wire serial network interface (SNI) for connection to standard physical layer (PHY) devices.

Since the 'X3150 offloads software forwarding tasks from the dedicated CPU, a switch designer has the option of creating a system with no onboard CPU at all for low-cost desktop applications. In addition, the designer has the flexibility of using a lower-cost CPU or designing in a CPU add-in card for management upgradeability. Other functions integrated into the ThunderSWITCH architecture help simplify network administration for MIS managers and end users. Each port is capable of supporting virtual LANs (VLANs) for workgroup or segment switch applications. A hardware Management Information Block (MIB) helps improve performance by gathering both Etherstat statistics and Remote Monitoring (RMON) statistics on-chip.

"By embedding standard network features in silicon, ThunderSWITCH helps OEMs dramatically reduce the price per port of desktop switching," said Eckles. "OEMs have been reducing the price per port of desktop switching by evolving switch architectures from software to hardware. The obvious next step is to move to highly integrated silicon. Our experience and standard product manufacturing ability, including 0.18 micron TImeline technology, help OEMs get there quicker."

Two other devices announced simultaneously by TI complement the 'X3150, serving to simplify switch designs further. TI's new TNETE2004 Quad PHY integrates four 10Base-T physical layer devices into a single chip. Three Quad PHYs used in conjunction with ThunderSWITCH create a 12-port 10Base-T Ethernet switch, with three additional ports available for network management, high-traffic servers and enterprise connections. The other new device, the TNETX315AL Address Lookup, enables a low-cost solution for supporting multiple addresses. The ThunderSWITCH TNETX3150 Ethernet Switch-on-a-Chip is packaged in a 352-pin ball grid array (BGA); the TNETE2004 Quad PHY in a 120-pin plastic quad flatpack (PQFP); and the TNETX315AL Address Lookup is in a 144-pin TQFP. The 'X3150 is priced at $145, the 'E2004 at $12 and the 'X315AL at $30, all in quantities of one thousand. All devices are available now from Texas Instruments.

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