Microchip Technology Inc. recently introduced LAN9353, LAN9354 and LAN9355 Three-Port, 10/100 Industrial Ethernet Switches to its reliable, high-quality, and high-performance portfolio of Ethernet solutions, which includes Ethernet switches, controllers, bridges and PHYs.
Featuring the IEEE 1588-2008 Precision Time-stamp Protocol (PTP) standard for clock accuracy in the sub-nanosecond range, these highly integrated Ethernet switches offload both synchronization and communications processing from the host CPU. Developers can also take advantage of advanced features such as Transparent Clocking, which improves system accuracy. Additional features designed to reduce overall system power consumption include Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE802.3az), and Wake On LAN. These switches enable the development of advanced hardware in the rapidly growing Industrial Ethernet market, including automation, motion-control, embedded, automotive, security/surveillance and telecommunications applications.
The LAN9353/4/5 10/100 Ethernet switches support widely adopted industry standards, such as MII (Media Independent Interface), RMII (Reduced Media Independent Interface), SMI (Serial Management Interface), Turbo MII, I2C™ and SPI/SQI™ communication interfaces, along with digital I/O. This gives system designers the flexibility to select from a wide range of microcontrollers, Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) or processors to interface with this new family of switches.
To enable development with the LAN9353/4/5 Three-Port 10/100 Ethernet Switches, three Microchip evaluation boards were also announced today that support various system architectures. These hardware systems demonstrate how to interface with the switches through basic input/output connections, or with microcontrollers such as the 32-bit PIC32MX family via serial communications.
Each of these new evaluation boards is also supported by a Software Development Kit (SDK), which enables developers to immediately start device evaluation, familiarize themselves with features, and begin building solutions for their applications. All three evaluation boards, (part # EVB-LAN9353, $300), (part # EVB-LAN9354, $250) and (part # EVB-LAN9355 $300).
The LAN9353/4/5 Three-Port 10/100 Ethernet Switches are available now for sampling and volume production in low pin count and small body size packages, starting at $3.31 each in 10,000-unit quantities. The package options are: 64-pin QFN and TQFP-EP for the LAN9353, 56-pin QFN for the LAN9354, and 88-pin QFN and 80-pin TQFP-EP for the LAN9355.