Texas Instruments Delivers Gigabit Bandwidth to the Desktop
DALLAS (Oct. 20, 1997) -- In anticipation of future corporate gigabit Ethernet bandwidth demands at the edge of the network, Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE:TXN) announced today the development of its ThunderSWITCH II multi-gigabit architecture that will allow end users to deploy bandwidth-intensive applications throughout the network. Building from the company's market-leading ThunderSWITCH product family, which delivers affordable 10/100 megabits per second (Mbps) bandwidth to the desktop, the ThunderSWITCH II architecture will enable affordable 100/1000 Mbps connections by delivering five million packets per second (PPS) via a single chip.
The ThunderSWITCH II architecture will offer unmatched flexibility and scalability via port awareness, port trunking and uplink cascading capabilities. Port awareness will allow original end manufacturers (OEMs) to develop port density configurations 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. Uplink cascading will enable multiple ThunderSWITCH II devices to be cascaded via a single gigabit port.
"This architecture demonstrates our ability to take quantum leaps in switching bandwidth," said Kurt Eckles, ThunderSWITCH marketing manager for TI's Networking Business Unit (NBU). "This is not simply a re-partitioning of the existing architecture but a breakthrough offering four to eight times the
throughput of current market offerings."
The first product to debut in this multi-gigabit architecture 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.
"Because our architecture was designed to support multi-gigabit switching, we will be able to offer two to four times the port density of our competitors current offerings," Eckles added. "This will be achieved by taking advantage of TI's leading semiconductor process expertise and facilities, which allow the cost-effective implementation of million gate designs like the TNETX4090."
Along with offering the same industry-compliant features that the ThunderSWITCH architecture provided, the TNETX4090 device will support 8,192 addresses via its internal content addressable memory (CAM). In addition, the device will support 64 IEEE 802.1Q user-configurable VLAN broadcast domains,
industry-standard 802.1P priority support, industry-standard 802.3X full-duplex flow control as well as a collision-based flow control scheme designed to ensure that the switch will never drop a packet. When used in a managed environment, the TNETX4090 will be capable of cost effectively supporting Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Spanning Tree 802.1D, and all nine levels of Remote Monitoring (RMON) through the support of an optimized, dedicated central processing unit (CPU) interface.
Complete System Solutions from Texas Instruments
TI offers complete system solutions for its ThunderSWITCH II family of devices. These solutions will include all the components for the physical layer (PHY) connections, including the previously announced 3V Quad 10/100 Mbps PHY (TNETE2104) device and a single-chip 1.25 Gbps transceiver (TNETE2201) device.
"The current switch and PHY solutions support the industry-standard Media
Independent Interface and Gigabit MII interfaces, and we will aggressively leverage the newly-developed Reduced MII implementation co-authored by TI," said Eckles.
Development Tools
As with previous ThunderSWITCH products, TI will continue to leverage its multi-million dollar investment in the Network Technology Center. Network system designers will be able to evaluate the ThunderSWITCH II architecture products, including the TNETX4090, with a reference kit. The kit will be complete with a TNETX4090 Ethernet switch reference platform, schematics, Gerber files, data sheets, applications notes, software, ordering information and other useful product collateral. The reference kit will be designed to accelerate OEM time-to-market and to provide an easy-to-use evaluation method of the ThunderSWITCH device.
Availability of the TNEX4090 is planned for second quarter of 1998. More information about TI's ThunderSWITCH product family is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/network/nbuhomex.htm.