PMC-Sierra announces fastest SONET SDH-ATM physical layer chip at 622 megabits per second; SATURN-Compatible S UNI-622 works with devices from AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, AMCC, Sumitomo and TriQuint to provide a complete 622 megabit per second ATM PHY

Business Wire, Jan 16, 1995

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 1995-- PMC-Sierra Monday announced the PM5355 S/UNI-622, the fastest commercially available ATM physical layer transmission convergence chip.

The S/UNI-622 will find applications in LAN backbones, public network switches, video servers and high end file server interfaces operating at 622 megabits per second. It was designed with the close involvement of key system vendors within the SATURN Development Group. It joins the PM5345 S/UNI-155, PM5346 S/UNI-155-LITE and PM7345 S/UNI-PDH SATURN-Compatible chip set family to provide complete ATM PHY solutions ranging from 1.5 megabits per second to 622 megabits per second.

According to Vernon Little, PMC-Sierra's manager of LAN products: "Most ATM switches are designed to support up to 622 megabits per second per slot and can use the S/UNI-622 for immediate benefit. For example, a port card currently containing four 155 megabit ports using S/UNI-155 chips can be upgraded to a 622 megabit port using the S/UNI-622 -- no architectural changes are required in the switch, and there are minimal software changes needed because of the similarity of the register sets."

Eric Cooper, chairman and chief executive officer of FORE Systems, said, "At FORE Systems we depend upon our strategic partners to help us maintain our market leadership. We have been an active partner in the development of this important product and will incorporate the S/UNI-622 in our OC-12c Network Module, with delivery in mid 1995.

"This Network Module, which is compatible with the entire FORE Systems ASX-200 switch family, will provide our customers with cost effective, high-speed inter-switch trunks that are critical to the continued expansion of their production ATM," Dr. Cooper concluded.

The S/UNI-622 provides integration of SONET and SDH framers, cell processors, and FIFO buffer functions to offer STS-12c or STM-4c operation for a seamless interface from WAN to LAN.

The device works in conjunction with commercially available serial to parallel and parallel to serial conversion and clock chips from vendors such as AT&T, TriQuint and Applied Micro Circuits Corp. and optical modules from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, AT&T and Sumitomo.

PMC-Sierra has worked closely with these vendors to develop complete SATURN-Compatible 622 megabit reference designs that are standards compliant and interoperable.

Said Little: "The S/UNI-622 is the logical next step for ATM operating speeds as defined by our UNI-PHY roadmap. It addresses three immediate requirements. The first one is that most LAN backbones need to carry a lot of traffic. With ATM workstations operating at 155 megabits, this means that you need at least this much bandwidth in a backbone, and preferably 622.

"The second is that some fast servers and workstations really need 622 megabit LAN links to enable new applications, such as video services, network computing and imaging. The third issue is that the public network providers want to carry a lot of ATM traffic, and 622 megabits is the minimum speed they want for trunking."

Added Little: "In order to ensure system interoperability and SATURN-Compatibility, we have worked closely with other semiconductor and optical component vendors in order to provide standards-compliant reference designs.

"We built three reference designs for our evaluation: One using TriQuint's TQ8101 serial/parallel converter and clock synthesis device plus the AT&T TRU-600 clock recovery chip or Sumitomo optical receiver/clock recovery module; the second using AMCC's S3005 parallel/serial converter and clock synthesizer chip plus an S3006 serial/parallel converter and clock recovery chip; and the third using PMC's PM5318 serial/parallel and parallel/serial converter chip with AT&T TRU-600 chips for clock recovery and clock synthesis.

"For optics, we evaluated AT&T's 1227G transmitter and 1310MC receiver; Hewlett-Packard's XMT3360B-622 transmitter and RCV1201D-622 receiver; and Sumitomo's ES9216-RD receiver. In the case of Sumitomo, the optical receiver has integrated clock recovery."

"The results of these evaluations have been summarized and documented by PMC-Sierra. We tested each reference design for functional operation, and conformance to ANSI and ITU jitter standards. The results were compiled and presented to the SATURN Development Group in October, and we are providing them to interested parties upon request. This will help to accelerate the design cycle and reduce technical risk for system developers," concluded Little.

The S/UNI-622 provides complete ATM cell processing and framing, operating at the standard SONET and SDH rates of 51.84, 155.52 and 622.08 megabits per second. It is compatible with PMC-Sierra's UNI-PHY standard which defines a set of scalable ATM application bit rates ranging from 13 megabits per second to 622 megabits per second.

The S/UNI-622 is significantly based on 622 megabit per second SONET/SDH technology developed by PMC-Sierra over the last four years, which has been extensively field-proven to be fully standards-compliant and interoperable with existing networks in North America, Europe and Asia.