Optimized Interconnect Solution Offers Suite of Innovative Pre-processing Tasks, Accelerating Digital Signal Processor Performance by up to 20 Percent
SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—June 19, 2006— Demonstrating its leadership in semiconductor solutions for wireless infrastructure design, IDT(TM) (Integrated Device Technology, Inc.) (NASDAQ: IDTI) today announced the industry's only off-the-shelf pre-processing switch (PPS) for digital signal processor (DSP) clusters. Optimized for wireless baseband processing applications and utilizing the Serial RapidIO(R) interconnect, the IDT PPS is an advanced semiconductor solution integrating an innovative suite of byte- and packet-level manipulation capabilities designed to offload DSPs of specific bandwidth-intensive tasks. This offload can accelerate each DSP within a cluster by up to 20 percent, thereby enabling the processors to focus on other compute-intensive functions related to meeting the requirements of next-generation wireless infrastructure design. The PPS is the first in a series of forthcoming IDT products designed to offer a complete data-acceleration solution for DSPs and other key components in wireless baseband processing applications, allowing customers to create scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions."IDT is the undisputed leader in designing and developing flow-control management and inter-processor communications solutions for the wireless infrastructure market, and the pre-processing switch is a continuation of our historical leadership in providing optimal interconnects for DSPs and CPUs in wireless base stations -- leadership which in current architectures has been demonstrated through our industry-leading FIFO and multi-port memory solutions," said Thomas Brenner, vice president and general manager for the IDT Flow-control Management division. "Our traditional strength in this market, coupled with our close relationships with the major wireless infrastructure system customers, and DSP and embedded processor partners, gives us the technical foundation and relevant applications expertise to develop a truly innovative solution that -- unlike generic switching options -- is optimized for wireless baseband processing applications by providing both interconnect and acceleration benefits."
"High performance digital signal processing is critical in today's fast-growing digital wireless market," said Alan Gatherer, chief technology officer for the Texas Instruments Communications Infrastructure and Voice Group. "High-performance DSPs require a high-performance interconnect to fully achieve their potential in a system. To maintain our leadership in this space, it behooves us to establish relationships with ecosystem vendors offering complementary technologies that enhance the performance and value of our leading DSP technology. With the pre-processing switch, IDT is enabling our joint customers to efficiently develop DSP clusters for baseband processing applications."
IDT PPS Enabling Data Acceleration in DSP Clusters
As the wireless infrastructure evolves toward higher performance 3G systems and beyond, designers are facing an increasingly complex set of operations and escalating computation requirements. For example, base station designs must process more carriers and sectors per base station to deliver significant cost reductions, while allowing sufficient flexibility and scalability to enable efficient reuse across applications and market segments. Functions such as within-packet manipulation, and summing and muxing of channels can consume large amounts of system resources and add latency to the system. One option that designers have considered is generic switches supplemented with an FPGA or ASIC, along with additional DSP compute cycles, in an attempt to achieve comparable data manipulation and distribution capabilities. However, cost and design complexity resulting in a delayed time to market are typically associated with FPGA or ASIC implementations. Moreover, implementing full Serial RapidIO ports and logical stacks onto an FPGA or ASIC requires a significant gate count, thereby making home-grown technology an inefficient switch-core solution.
The IDT PPS provides a compelling solution, integrating traditional data manipulation implementations with the switch fabric, and enhancing efficiency by offering tailored functionality designed to offload the DSP of low-level processing, thus reducing or eliminating the requirements for FPGA/ASIC implementations. These functions include within-packet and within-sample manipulations, as well as an integrated DMA capability and the ability to sum packets across multiple input sources. The offload of low-value processing enables the DSP to focus on higher-value algorithms, allowing customers to deliver higher proprietary value against competitors at like or reduced costs. The DSP cluster is also able to achieve increased channels or users supported and reduced overall power consumption for a given capacity. By integrating the summation operations, the PPS allows a reduction in overall component count, as systems typically require a separate component dedicated to this task. The PPS also provides robust performance to meet the application requirements, with internal bandwidth approaching 100 Gbps in support of baseband processing or other DSP cluster applications.
In addition, the IDT PPS offers support for system synchronization issued on the input and output operations. This function simplifies the operation of complex RF-baseband systems, allowing for a smooth and efficient transition from TDM-style architectures to "TDM-like" or pure packet-based systems.
Offering the industry's highest port count, the IDT PPS offers 40 bi-directional Serial RapidIO links with a high degree of configurability, including 10 ports in 4x width, or up to 22 ports in 1x width, or a combination of 4x and 1x ports. Each port is independently programmable for 1.25 Gbaud, 2.5 Gbaud, or 3.125 Gbaud transmission speeds, as well as short-haul (chip-to-chip) or long-haul (backplane) transmission distances.
Software and Hardware Tools Offer Ease of System Simulation
In mid-July, IDT will begin providing the PPS mounted on an ATCA-compatible evaluation board. Based on the AMC profile, the board is tailored for baseband processing demonstrations, showcasing the PPS device with four of the Texas Instruments TCI6482 DSPs (with follow-on option for the TCI6455 DSPs) and providing sufficient software for rapid setup, initialization, and on-site evaluation of the PPS capabilities. The board enables realistic case studies that allow for moving tasks and operations from the DSPs to the PPS and observing the system benefits. In addition to the evaluation board and associated hardware, IDT provides a robust library of software tools that offer designers the ability to execute a wide range of simulations, and support board and system evaluations based on simplified RF and DSP card traffic models. These device models include standard switch and PPS modes, allowing system designers the ability to model the benefits of the pre-processing capabilities through the manipulation of a vast range of key parameters, including pre-processing functions, port count, port speed, packet length and switch utilization. The simulation tools are latency-accurate, and use the actual device API and GUI.
Pricing and Availability
The IDT PPS is available in a 676-ball BGA flip-chip package, which is RoHS compliant. The product is currently sampling and is priced at $125 in 10,000 unit quantities. For additional product information on the IDT PPS, visit www.IDT.com.
Product Part # Key technical Package Date Price/
name ordering specifications type production Qty at
code available 10k
units
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Pre- 70K2000BR 40 bidirectional BGA-676 November $125
Processing Serial RapidIO links; 27mm x 2006
Switch configurable in up to 27mm
(PPS) 22 ports 1.0mm
(1x and/or 4x); pitch
selectable port
speeds up to 3.125
Gbps
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About IDT
IDT is a world leader in designing, developing and delivering vital semiconductor solutions that enable customers to accelerate innovation. IDT helps customers solve complex system design challenges associated with the evolving requirements of communications, computing and consumer applications. By leveraging its system knowledge and extensive blend of technology, IDT is able to deliver essential solutions, including timing products, network search engines, flow-control management ICs and products for standards-based serial switching. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., IDT has design, manufacturing and sales facilities throughout the world. IDT stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market(R) under the symbol "IDTI." Additional information about IDT is accessible at www.IDT.com.
IDT is a trademark of Integrated Device Technology, Inc. RapidIO(R) is a registered trademark of the RapidIO Trade Association. Other brands, product names and marks are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective owners.
Contact:
IDT Corporate Communications Darlene Perry, 408-284-2735 Email Contact or Porter Novelli Brad Langley, 408-369-4600 ext. 636 Email Contact