ICs Boost Performance, Scalability Of Switches

An easy migration path to scalable Ethernet switch designs with gigabit uplinks and stacking options is offered by the T-Rex Switchset chipset. The set’s foundation is the LS211 switch fabric IC, which uses a dedicated crossbar switch path for every port to deliver 10-Gb/s, non-blocking switching speeds and full wire speeds for up to 49 ports.The set also includes the LS125 secondary address translation cache, the LS120 and LS200 quad port controllers, the LS1000 Gigabit port controller, and the LS202 StackLink controller. As a set, the chips feature a patented head-of-line blocking technique that guarantees delivery of all packets to uncongested ports with out packet loss. They also use a separate multicast bus for the low-latency multicast operation required for many multimedia applications. A secondary address-translation cache using low-cost SRAMs minimizes memory requirements. A reference design includes an easy-to-use interface to simplify switch designs.