Pre-Fabricated ASIC Platforms Eye High-Performance Systems

Sept. 1, 2003

Two predesigned ASIC platform slices, the RapidChip Xtreme and RapidChip Integrator, are now members of LSI Logic's ASIC platform family. The Xtreme platform is optimized for high-performance, high-bandwidth applications such as...

Dave Bursky

Two predesigned ASIC platform slices, the RapidChip Xtreme and RapidChip Integrator, are now members of LSI Logic's ASIC platform family.

The Xtreme platform is optimized for high-performance, high-bandwidth applications such as communications, storage, and computing. It offers up to 18 million ASIC gates and up to 10 Mbits of on-chip memory.

The Integrator platform, which packs from 2.9 million to 9.8 million gates and up to 5.3 Mbits of RAM, targets the same three areas. However, the Integrator platform has a slightly lower peak performance capability and uses lower-cost wire-bond packaging schemes. As a result, it best suits consumer, industrial, security, instrumentation, imaging, and other more cost-sensitive application areas.

Pre-integrated on the Xtreme platform are eight, 16, or 32 GigaBlaze serializer/deserializer channels, each capable of data-transfer rates of 4.25 Gbits/s. This lets designers use the serial interfaces with standards such as 1- and 10-Gbit Ethernet and Fibre Channel, as well as with serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), serial attached SCSI, and PCI Express.

The platform also supports the company's HyperPHY transceivers, which can be used to implement SPI-4.2 or SFI 4.1 link interfaces. To get the most from the high-speed I/O ports, the Xtreme slices are designed for flip-chip packaging.

LSI Logic Corp.www.lsilogic.com/products/platform/index.html

About the Author

Dave Bursky | Technologist

Dave Bursky, the founder of New Ideas in Communications, a publication website featuring the blog column Chipnastics – the Art and Science of Chip Design. He is also president of PRN Engineering, a technical writing and market consulting company. Prior to these organizations, he spent about a dozen years as a contributing editor to Chip Design magazine. Concurrent with Chip Design, he was also the technical editorial manager at Maxim Integrated Products, and prior to Maxim, Dave spent over 35 years working as an engineer for the U.S. Army Electronics Command and an editor with Electronic Design Magazine.