Tundra Prototypes Bus Bridge for PCI, PCI-X, and CompactPCI High-Speed Applications

Business Wire, August 27, 2001

Business Editors

KANATA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2001

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSE:TUN.)

Flexible Across Multiple System-Interconnect

Applications, the Tundra Tsi320(TM) Provides Seamless Migration to

Higher Bandwidth Protocols

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation ("Tundra") - the leader in system interconnect for the Internet and communications infrastructure market - has announced that its Tundra Tsi320(TM) dual-mode PCI-to-PCI bus bridge with PCI-X enhancements is immediately available in prototype quantities.

The device raises the bar in PCI bridging by providing the most flexible and highest performing PCI-to-PCI bridge on the market. By providing a seamless migration path from PCI to PCI-X, the Tsi320 also lays the groundwork for the migration to next-generation standards-based system-interconnect, such as the RapidIO protocol.

Targeted for CompactPCI, communications, storage and enterprise computing systems, the Tsi320 supports both transparent and non-transparent bridging modes and operates equally well in both legacy PCI systems or the higher-speed 133MHz PCI-X operating mode. In addition, it supports both 3.3V and 5V signalling environments. This flexibility gives companies a smooth, low-risk migration path from their current architectures to new higher-bandwidth PCI-X and CompactPCI-X designs.

"The Tsi320's architectural enhancements can deliver up to 2x performance improvements over traditional PCI-to-PCI bridges," commented Jonathan Morris, Director of Product Management at Tundra. "Once designers enable PCI-X, they gain a further another 2X performance benefits, resulting in a technology two-for-one system improvement."

Many customers want to retain portions of their legacy systems and still gain the higher speeds offered by the PCI-X protocol. The Tsi320's ability to bridge the requirements of PCI and PCI-X performance characteristics is important in delivering this capability, while still allowing companies to avoid the time, costs and complexities of designing a completely new system.

Higher integration is another hallmark of the Tsi320. The integration by Tundra of many functions never before found in PCI-to-PCI bridges demonstrates the Company's acknowledgement of the importance of PCI and PCI-X as an interconnect in the embedded community, and that the requirements of embedded systems are different than those of desktop and servers. Among these functions are multiple DMA engines, dual UARTs, messaging facilities, and semaphores. Integration of these features into the Tsi320, enable simpler board design while improving both system performance and latency.

The design of dual function boards in CompactPCI applications is also simplified because the Tsi320 can be configured in either transparent or non-transparent modes allowing for the first time the design of universal CompactPCI boards (boards that can operate in any slot in the system). Another important feature is CompactPCI Hot Swap, which is a critical requirement in high availability telecommunications and data communications applications. For data-intensive applications where raw system speed is required, the Tsi320 includes four integrated DMA channels. Never before has a PCI to PCI bridge been targeted to specifically address the unique requirements of CompactPCI boards.

The Tsi320 is packaged as a 352-pin ball-grid-array (BGA) and is available now in volume at a cost of US$41 each.

About PCI-X

PCI-X is a superset of PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect). PCI was developed to help bridge processors with fast I/O devices and other peripheral components in a cost-effective manner. However, growing demand for higher-speed network communications, and rapidly increasing microprocessor speeds, is creating an industry-wide need for even faster interconnection speeds between processors and I/O devices. PCI-X is an evolutionary bus protocol that increases system performance by providing greater throughput and efficiency. It operates at up to eight times the bandwidth of current PCI bus technology, offering designers the high performance required for the latest telecommunication and data communication applications.

About System Interconnect

System Interconnect is the technology to connect components and subsystems in almost any embedded system. It includes chips on a board and boards on a backplane. System Interconnect is a vital enabling technology for the networked world. The convergence of voice, video, and data traffic, the need for more secure communications, and the exploding demand for high-speed network access are putting communications infrastructure vendors under intense pressure to provide faster, well-managed bandwidth that also integrates smoothly with existing technology. Tundra System Interconnect helps these vendors address their customer needs. It enables them to build standards-based network equipment that can scale to multi-Gigahertz speeds and beyond, and also integrate with existing infrastructure.

About Tundra

Tundra Semiconductor Corporation ("Tundra")(TSE:TUN) designs, develops, and markets System Interconnect for use by the world's leading communications infrastructure equipment companies.