Galileo Technology Unveils the Horizon Family of Single-Chip, Multi-Service Communication Controllers - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, Oct 18, 1999

Galileo Technology Monday announced the first devices in the new Horizon Family of LAN/WAN Communication Controllers. These system-on-a-chip devices will form the core of next-generation multi-service edge routers and remote access equipment that merge the functions of LAN-to-WAN routers, voice-over-IP gateways, network security equipment, and remote access servers.

"The dizzying pace of developments in both broadband internet connectivity technology and network edge applications has left equipment designers with some very difficult challenges," said Mitch Kahn, vice president of market development for Galileo. "Our customers were looking to us to provide system-on-a-chip solutions that connect the local area network to the Internet using everything from ISDN to T3/E3 to xDSL. At the same time, this solution needed to deliver the level of CPU performance required by demanding applications like VPN, firewalling and voice-over-IP. Because of the tremendous competition in this market, the solution had to reduce costs. Our new Horizon Family products solve all of these problems."

The First Horizon Family Products: the GT-96100 and GT-96101

The GT-96100 combines most of the common functions found in multi-service access routers into a single chip. Included in the GT-96100 are four functional units:

- The System Controller Unit provides a high-performance 83MHz MIPS CPU interface, SDRAM controller with data integrity support, device controller with five chip selects, four independent direct memory access controllers, interrupt controller, general purpose I/O ports, three timer counters and a watchdog timer. Included is a 64-bit/66MHz PCI interface that can also be configured as two independent 32-bit interfaces. A PCI arbiter that can handle up to nine external masters is also integrated.

- The WAN Packet Processor Unit provides eight 55Mbps multi-protocol serial controllers, 16 serial DMA engines, and four Flex-TDM time slot assigners. Designed to interface to a variety of WAN media, the WAN Packet Processor Unit can be used for connection to ISDN, T1/E1, T3/E3, HSSI and a variety of DSL technologies. The WAN Packet Processor Unit within the GT-96100 provides bandwidth 2-3 times higher than existing non-integrated solutions.

- The LAN Interface Unit includes two Fast Ethernet MACs, a packet filtering and quality-of-service engine, and four DMA engines.

The GT-96101 is similar to the GT-96100 but eliminates the CPU interface. The GT-96101 can be used to increase the number of WAN ports in systems such as DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs).

"A single, high-performance, yet cost effective device from the new Horizon Family replaces four or five discrete chips inside a typical multi-service edge router," commented Ronen Boneh, Horizon product line director. "These first Horizon Family products represent the extension of Galileo's communication system-on-a-chip design expertise from LAN switching into the LAN-to-Internet connectivity arena."

Industry Leading Performance

Remote access performance has become a critical issue to corporate networks as connections to the Internet increase, and bandwidth-intensive, media-rich applications continue to be deployed. The GT-96100 and GT-96101 provide industry-leading performance in several critical areas: WAN packet processing, LAN packet processing, and microprocessor system bandwidth.

The WAN packet processor can sustain all eight channels running simultaneously at 55Mbits/sec. These faster WAN connections mean an increase in the Internet throughput supported by a single edge router. Ultimately this means a GT-9610x based product will be more scalable and provide greater flexibility than older designs.

The integrated address filtering mechanism of the Fast Ethernet controllers greatly enhances system performance by offloading the CPU of this typically processor intensive task. In addition, the Fast Ethernet controllers have hardware support for quality of service (QoS) to enable applications such as voice-over-IP and streaming video and audio.

The Horizon Family also offers a major performance enhancement over today's remote access system architectures by directly transferring WAN and LAN packets to/from main memory without using the PCI bus. This allows the full 64-bit/66MHz PCI bandwidth to be used for connectivity to discrete ATM SARs, encryption/compression engines, and other peripheral devices.

"Galileo's integration of WAN, LAN and system controller functionality into a single chip is well-suited for next generation, high-performance, multi-service access routers," said Shirish Sathe, Engineering Manager, Cisco Systems.

The Perfect Integration of Communications and CPU Processing Power The GT-96100 supports industry-standard 64-bit MIPS CPUs from a number of vendors including Quantum Effect Devices and IDT. These CPUs offer 450+ Dhrystone MIPS performance--more than enough processing power for processor intensive network functions such as fast routing table lookups, packet manipulation and traffic management.