Alliance Semiconductor introduces family of Resilient Packet Ring Controllers

15 December 2003 Santa Clara, CA Lightwave--Alliance Semiconductor today 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 2.5 and 10 Gbits/sec for Ethernet. The AS95L2100 family is optimized to support the requirements of high speed RPR networks for a variety of vertical markets including networking, communications, computing, cable infrastructure, servers and storage cluster systems.

Based on a 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 RPR Media Access Control 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% software compatible and differ in the bandwidth and line rate support. The AS95L2100 has a 20-Gbit/sec bandwidth and supports OC-192, OC-48 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet line interfaces. The AS95L2102 has 10-Gbit/sec (max) bandwidth and supports OC-48 and OC-12 line interfaces. The AS95L2101 has 5 Gbit/sec (max) bandwidth and supports OC-48, OC-12 and 2.5-Gbit/sec Ethernet line interfaces.

The AS95L2100 RPR Controllers are currently sampling along with a complete suite of software modules and drivers.