networkZONE Products for the week of March 24, 2003
Conexant Says…
A Wider Gateway - Conexant's New Family Of Home Network
Processors Boast Highest Performance
Advanced ARM Core With Integrated Memory Management Unit Enables
200-300-MHz Operation On Multiple Operating Systems
Conexant Systems, Inc. has added to its family of home network processors
(HNPs) with a high-performance line of chips intended for broadband gateways
and wide area network (WAN) access applications. In a broadband gateway
application, the CX8611x family enables secure, high-speed Internet access
sharing for multiple personal computers (PCs) while supporting Ethernet,
universal serial bus (USB), HomePNA, HomePlug, IEEE 802.11a/b/g and other
local area network (LAN) media. For WAN access, the CX8611x supports all
broadband technologies including digital subscriber line (DSL), cable and
Ethernet. Based on an ARM926EJ-S processor, the CX8611x family includes
two devices that operate at 200 MHz and 300 MHz, respectively. Also included
is a memory management unit (MMU) that supports major operating systems
such as Linux, VxWorks and Windows CE.NET.
"The integration of key communications access technologies with our processor platforms enables us to support a wide variety of broadband gateway solutions, and further expand our leadership position in home network processors," said Chee Kwan, vice president of Broadband Access Products for Conexant's Broadband Communications segment. "Our new home network processor family supports high-speed and secure wireless connectivity applications, including those based on 802.11a/b/g protocols, as well as demanding performance-based applications such as voice over Internet Protocol and high-speed virtual private network applications. This flexibility is particularly important to our customers as it enables them to leverage a single platform across many differentiated products."
The CX8611x includes an advanced encryption engine for high-speed, secure virtual private network (VPN) applications. The device also has a USB host capability, and can be used to deliver broadband gateways with advanced printer server functionality or connectivity to USB devices. In addition to data broadband gateways, the CX8611x's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) support makes it ideal for VoIP gateways or VoIP phones, supporting one or more lines.
Conexant is the worldwide market share leader in network management and
security semiconductor solutions for the broadband digital home through
its family of home network processors. The company's home networking products
include network processors and LAN solutions for residential gateway architectures
supporting bridging, routing, security, and wireless functionality. Conexant's
product offering addresses the entire spectrum of broadband access applications
from basic data connectivity to advanced, high speed, and secure voice and
data networks.
analogZONE Says . . .
While much of the electronics market is flat, home and SOHO gateways offer a promising, if not cutthroat market opportunity. Conexant understood this early on and has had great success with their CX84200 that integrates an ARM7-based RISC engine with integrated L2 Ethernet switch. It's intended for lower-cost home gateways where every penny counts as much as performance. But the home gateway has matured, and so have Connexant's offerings.
The growing bandwidth demands of broadband services, and the more complex security and networking features in second-generation gateways need, a bunch more processing power. For example, most of the current generation gateways work just fine for the 6-8 Mbit/s supported by 802.11b WLANs, but the higher rates supported by 802.11a/g will require more MIPS than they can provide. And that's why the good folks at Conexant decided to well, as Chef Emril might say, "kick it up a notch" with their CX86111 and CX86113 chips.
The 82100 moves the Ethernet switch off-chip and moves in a bunch of performance-oriented coreware to take its place. The processor for example, is an ARM926 processor running at 2 or 300 MHz which connects to an external Ethernet switch chip, and packs 16K each of data & instruction cache (see architecture diagram.) You also get 24K of "tightly-coupled memory (TCM)", Conexant's term for a fast memory that does not purge like cache does. TCM is especially handy for VPN work to support the encryption engine algorithms that require fast execution. And if that weren't enough, the chip has an integral MMU that makes it possible to support WinCE. For those of you who prefer an elegant OS from a more civilized time, the MMU also makes it much easier to run Linux directly in the address-constrained memory of an embedded environment. Both chips also have a triple DES core to support security applications, plus 2 10/100 Ethernet MACs, A PCI interface (for 802.11a/g), and 2 USB 1.1 host ports primarily for printer services, security keys.
To support the derived voice services that are becoming so popular in Asia, and starting to catch on here, the processor has a VoIP interface to hook up to 4 phones. It requires an external data pump and SLIC/SLACs, to support POTS phones, or you can run up to 4 IP phones over the Ethernet connection (see application diagram).
Unlike Motorola's recently introduced gateway product, Conexant does not supply a complete reference design, and simply provides an evaluation board, and hardware driver code. They rely on 3rd-party houses or designers for protocol stacks, and your ingenuity for the rest. Despite this, whacking together a product's software should be relatively straightforward thanks to the standard, and well-evolved ARM development environments that can be used with this chip.
| |