Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, May 23, 1994 -- PMC-Sierra, Inc. announced two new high integration chips for ATM LAN and WAN interface solutions today, the PM5346 SUNI-155-LITE and PM7345 SUNI-PDH. These SUNI versions come on the market less than a year after PMC-Sierra introduced the first SUNI chip, which has become the industry standard ATM interface chip.
These new chips provide feature enhancements to PMC's existing SATURN-Compatible SUNI (SATURN User Network Interface) and PLPP physical layer ATM chips. Both chips were developed in collaboration with the SATURN ATM chipset development group. The group includes more than 30 participating companies working together to accelerate the development of standard, interoperable ATM chip sets. The SUNI-PDH was also developed with close involvement of FORE Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, a leading manufacturer of ATM networking equipment.
The PM5346 SUNI-155-LITE represents the first SATURN-Compatible ATM physical layer device that provides integration of SONET and SDH framers, cell processors, FIFO buffers, and analog clock recovery and clock synthesis functions. The SUNI-155-LITE is software compatible and interoperable with the original PMC SUNI-155 chip, thus preserving software and hardware investment. It operates at the 155 megabit per second SONET STS-3c or SDH STM-1 application rates, as well as the recently defined ATM Forum mid-range PHY rates of 51 (STS-1), 25, and 13 megabits per second.
The SUNI-155-LITE is available in a small 14 x 20 mm plastic quad flat package. This package occupies only 40% of the original SUNI's circuit board area and includes additional analog functions. When factoring in the original SUNI's extra support circuits, this allows designers to fit four SUNI-155-LITE ATM interfaces in the area of one original SUNI interface. This increases port card density and lowers ATM switch cost.
The 'LITE' also supports PMC's 'SCI-PHY' (SATURN-Compatible Interface for PHYsical Layer) device interconnect standard. SCI-PHY defines a synchronous 8- or 16-bit cell interface for ATM device interconnection. SCI-PHY is a superset of 'Utopia,' a basic interconnect specification which defines a similar but less capable function. SCI-PHY improves on the Utopia spec by defining FIFO latency management functions and supporting multiple-physical layer device connections. SCI-PHY also defines operation for physical layer devices up to 622 megabits per second.
Finally, the LITE is the first ATM physical layer device to provide link level flow control support. This function is critical in certain low cost ATM concentrator and hub applications, where the concentrator or hub's ability to control traffic on the end station's physical layer device is important. This function is performed by Generic Flow Control (GFC) bit extraction and insertion in advance of cell FIFOs and by the provision of an XOFF (transmission off) control pin.
The PM7345 SUNI-PDH chip is an enhancement of the PM7321 PLPP, the world's first commercial ATM PHY device, introduced in 1992. PMC developed the PLPP (Physical Layer Protocol Processor) chip in partnership with StrataCom, San Jose, CA. The PLPP is used for DS-3 applications at 45 megabits per second and can also be configured for DS-1 and European E1 applications at 1.544 and 2.048 megabits per second, respectively.
The SUNI-PDH (PDH stands for Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy) was co-developed with FORE Systems. The chip adds European E3 framing functions to the PLPP according to ITU standards G.751 and G.832. It also provides a SCI-PHY compliant cell interface. The SUNI-PDH is available in an 84 pin PLCC which is hardware and software compatible with the existing PLPP. It also comes in a smaller 14 x 14 mm 100 pin plastic quad flat package, which supports the SCI-PHY interface and still preserves software compatibility. Using the 100 pin SUNI-PDH provides ATM interfaces for DS-1, E1, E3, or DS-3 that occupy only about one square inch (625 square mm) including external support chips for the complete physical layer silicon.
According to Eric Cooper, President of FORE Systems, "We are already using PMC-Sierra's existing SUNI and PLPP physical layer chips for the 155 and 45 megabit ATM port cards in our switch. When it became apparent that we urgently needed E3 framing in order to serve the European market with our ATM switches, we turned to PMC to develop the SUNI-PDH. The resulting SUNI-PDH chip gives us hardware and software compatibility with the current PLPP. This has helped us reduce development time and cost and minimize risk."
Says Cooper, "Another benefit of working with PMC is that they provide complete standards compliance testing of their devices as part of their SATURN-Compatibility program. They have all of the specialized test equipment needed to ensure that we don't have to spend weeks in the lab proving that the chips work, meet standards, and are interoperable. Debugging communication systems is difficult enough without having to debug your supplier's chips at the same time."
Cooper adds, "This also applies to the SUNI-155-LITE chip. We know that PMC will provide us with proven chips so that we can just use them in new 155 megabit designs without having to spend valuable engineering time proving in PMC's chip design or rewriting software."
The PM5346 SUNI-155-LITE is currently sampling. It is available in a 128 pin 14 x 20 mm plastic quad flat package (PQFP). The PM7345 SUNI-PDH will be sampling in June. It is available in either a 84 pin plastic leaded chip carrier (PLCC) which is pin compatible with the PM7321 PLPP, or in a 100 pin PQFP which provides access to the SCI-PHY synchronous bus.
PMC-Sierra, Inc. is a privately held company specializing in high performance chip set solutions for broadband networking applications. PMC was incorporated in 1992 out of the former Pacific Microelectronics Centre division of MPR Teltech Ltd., with investment from Sierra Semiconductor of San Jose, CA and Bass & Associates of Santa Clara, CA. # # #
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
PMC-Sierra contact: Vernon Little little@pmc-sierra.bc.ca
Written by clapp@cs.orst.edu