Rockwell unveils high-performance network driver for next generation power Macintosh platform; custom ASIC and software architecture optimize performance, reliability, price

Business Wire, June 19, 1995

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 1995--Rockwell Network Systems, a business unit of Rockwell, Monday announced a Macintosh driver for its 2200 and 2300 Series of high-performance network interface cards (NICs) that allows Macintosh computers to take advantage of high-speed local-area networking for the first time.

The Rockwell 2200 Series FDDI NICs and 2300 Series 100BASE-X Fast Ethernet NICs provide a high-performance network connection and interface to Apple's PCI-based Power Macintosh(tm) 9500, which was also introduced Monday. Rockwell's 2200 and 2300 Series are among the first to work in either a Macintosh or PC with no hardware modification.

"Rockwell has ramped production of its Apple-compatible adapters to coincide with the release of the Power Macintosh 9500," said Frank Roys, Rockwell Network Systems director of marketing. "Given the high-performance leadership of our existing FDDI adapter products in the UNIX and PC environments, we are striving to achieve the highest performance for Macintosh users as well."

The 2200 and 2300 Series use two Rockwell core technologies, FASTRACC(tm) and VDA(tm), to provide high-performance servers and workstations with a highly reliable, link-level connection to the high-speed backbone. The 2200 Series represents Rockwell's second-generation of FDDI products based on these core technologies.

The 2300 Series is Rockwell's first Fast Ethernet product family. FASTRACC, implemented as a custom ASIC design, economically achieves the highest performance in its class. It provides all system interface, data movement, management and control functions using an optimized, embedded ASIC.

"The advanced silicon integration further reduces its cost while increasing its reliability," said Roys. "This technology has already been proven in Rockwell's previous generation of FDDI adapters, which currently provide the highest performance in the FDDI VMEbus adapter market."

The 2200 and 2300 Series also employ Rockwell's Virtual Driver Architecture(tm) (VDA), a common core software architecture which can be ported across a wide range of different NICs, operating systems and network protocol environments.

VDA partitions the software development into several layers, including a hardware-dependent layer, a system/OS-dependent layer and a core hardware/OS-independent layer. As VDA-based drivers are ported to other NICs, system platforms or protocols, only the affected layer requires additional development.

"VDA makes it easy for us to quickly add drivers for additional computing environments, and this is why we can so quickly address the emerging PCI Macintosh market," said Steve Riccs, director of engineering for Rockwell Network Systems. "It also allows us to efficiently port existing drivers to additional system buses and network technologies, as new adapters are developed."

Drivers for NetWare(r), Windows NT(tm), SCO UNIX, UnixWare(tm), Solaris(r), and AIX are also included with the 2200 and 2300 Series. Windows(tm) for Workgroups, Windows95(tm), and OS/2 drivers are under development.

This wide array of network operating system drivers allows Rockwell customers to connect a wide variety of high-speed devices to high-speed networks, including systems from vendors such as Apple, AT&T, AST, ALR, Compaq, Dell, Digital, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. These computers address the need for high-speed access to servers running graphics, multimedia and client/server applications.

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is a new local bus architecture, which provides a high-speed connection through a direct path from the peripheral device to the CPU and main memory. The result of the 32-bit wide, direct data path and 33MHz clock is a maximum data transfer rate of 132MBps.

The 2200 Series supports asynchronous and synchronous FDDI operations, with alternatives for single attach stations (SAS) and dual attach stations (DAS).

A programmable 64-entry, 48-bit content addressable memory (CAM) handles fast detection and matching of destination source, individual or multicast addresses. The series also supports ANSI compliant Station Management (SMT) version 7.3 and ANSI/ISO X3T12.