networkZONE Products for the week of December 15, 2003
Alliance Semi Says…
RPR ASAP - Alliance Semiconductor's New Family of
Resilient Packet Ring Controllers Support Emerging 802.17 Standard
Adaptive Compute Technology Tracks Evolving Standard, Supports
Proprietary Implementations
Alliance Semiconductor Corporation has announced the availability of
its AS95L2100 family of Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) Controllers. The AS95L2100
family supports the emerging IEEE 802.17 RPR standard (draft 3.x) at various
line interface speeds including OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192 for SONET, and 2.5G
and 10G for Ethernet. The AS95L2100 family is optimized to support the requirements
of high-speed, resilient ring networks for a variety of vertical markets
including networking, communications, computing, cable infrastructure, servers
and storage cluster systems.
Based on a unique, patented Adaptive Computing Architecture with adaptive logic optimized for RPR packet handling that guarantees wire-speed processing, Alliance's AS95L2100 family is the first RPR Controllers to track the continuous changes in the IEEE 802.17 drafts and, in addition, support, using a single controller, multiple ring and proprietary protocols such as Cisco's SRP v2.
The AS95L2100 family is highly integrated and supports multiple physical interfaces, modes, protocols and standards. The AS95L2100 family incorporates the resilient packet ring Media Access Control (MAC) along with most layer 1 and layer 2 functions including: SONET framers, Ethernet MACs, POS/HDLC, Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) and Wan Interface Sub-layer (WIS - for Ethernet WAN applications) frame delineators and acts as a complete ring solution. The Controllers also integrate on-chip address matching Content Addressable Memory (CAMs), and large buffer memory for insert and high priority transit queues.
The AS95L2100 family is the industry's first RPR Controllers to terminate up to four full rings (eight ringlets) on a single controller enabling leading OEM customers to increase the number of rings supported per line card and thus increase the capacity of the system. Similarly, the AS95L2100 uniquely operates in either single line-card or dual-line card modes. In single-line card mode, a single AS95L2100 Controller can terminate the rings reducing the system cost and power consumption. In dual-line, two AS95L2100 are used to terminate the rings to provide local East and West rings redundancy.
"As a principal member of the IEEE 802.17 technical working group and a member of the RPR Alliance, we are seeing an acceleration in the adoption of RPR technology." said Robert Napaa, vice president of Marketing and Business Development for Alliance's System Solutions Business Unit. "The AS95L2100 RPR Controllers family provides flexibility in the deployment of SONET or Ethernet enabled RPR networks. By using our RPR controllers, customers can design, manufacture and market high capacity and very cost effective RPR line cards. They can remotely support changes in the RPR standard drafts and implement proprietary protocols on line cards already deployed in the field."
The AS95L2100 family includes three devices based on the same architecture
and incorporates similar sets of features. The devices are 100 percent software
compatible and differ in the bandwidth and line rate support. The AS95L2100
has a 20Gbps bandwidth and supports OC192, OC48 and 10GE line interfaces.
The AS95L2102 has 10Gbps max bandwidth and supports OC48 and OC12 line interfaces.
The AS95L2101 has 5Gbps max bandwidth and supports OC48, OC12 and 2.5GE
line interfaces.
analogZONE Says . . .
Alliance's release of the first RPR I've seen in two years is an exciting development in the evolution of the WAN, and yet another harbinger of a thaw in the nuclear winter that's hovered over the networking market since 2001. While I'm still not fully up to speed on RPR (yet), I do know it promises to help reclaim much of the lost bandwidth in current Sonet networks, and add a great deal of flexibility without requiring a complete "forklift upgrade" to existing systems. And highly-integrated merchant silicon like these recent offerings from Alliance will help gain crucial early market share for this emerging standard by dropping the price of RPR equipment and cutting its development time to boot.
Alliance's AS95L2100 series of RPR controllers appear to be well-conceived insofar as they are designed with enough flexibility that they can track the still-evolving 802.17 standard and also support proprietary RPR-like protocols such as currently run by Cisco. Alliance has pulled out all the stops with these parts, including as much functionality as possible. The on-chip CAMs and buffer memory helps to slash BOM costs as well as improve overall performance.
Hopefully these new RPR controllers arrive at a time when industry is once again willing to consider taking risks with new networking standards, protocols, and technologies such as 802.17. If it is Alliance has certainly positioned itself properly to help move RPR from novelty to mainstream technology.
In developing a Saltshaker Rating for this part, I had to strike a balance between my excitement over what appears to be a very well thought-out design and my concern over the complex and ambitious nature of the product. Since I don't have much experience with Alliance or its ability to deliver product of this speed and complexity, I added a half saltshaker, but the fact that it's sampling now helps the AS95L2100 series still maintain a respectable 2.5 saltshaker rating. The AS95L2100 RPR Controllers come with a complete suite of software modules and drivers. All devices are currently sampling with production scheduled for Q1, 2004. Price starts at $950.
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