ICS plans Fast Ethernet push; expands clock devices to NexGen, Rambus

Electronic News, April 3, 1995 by Jim DeTar

VALLEY FORGE, PA. - Integrated Circuit Systems (ICS) is targeting the 100Mbps Ethernet market and will also soon ship its first clock chips supporting NexGen's Pentium-challenger Nx586 microprocessors and Ram bus memory controller technology, under a company roadmap revealed last week.

While networking is only a small part of the company's current product mix, ICS hopes its revenues will grow rapidly. ICS last month expanded its PHY-ceiver family of high-speed physical layer transceiver products with the introduction of the ICS1889, a single-chip, Fast Ethernet device targeting fiber-optic network adapter cards, repeaters and switches. Additional 100Mbps Ethernet devices are planned.

Some 20 percent of ICS' sales are ASICs, while 60 percent are clock devices sold under the company's FTG (Frequency Timing Generator) family label. The majority of the rest of the company's revenues come from audio and video chips targeting the emerging multimedia market; ICS last year acquired Turtle Beach as part of its multimedia strategy.

While ICS plans to soon support NexGen's MPUs with clock devices, it also is scheduled to begin shipping clock chips to Intel for use with its "P6" MPU. "We don't play favorites, "said Raju Shah, ICS director of marketing. "Although we support Intel, we support anybody. We are the recommended supplier for Intel and this year we will go to set-top box applications."

In addition to NexGen and Intel, ICS sells clocks to Apple and to IBM which uses the clock devices to accompany the PowerPC 601, Mr. Shah said. In addition, ICS will sample Rambus clock devices within the next three weeks. "Those will be used in PDAs (personal digital assistants)."

To support all of this current and planned activity, a variety of foundry partners manufacture products for the fabless semiconductor house. All of its non-custom products are CMOS and range from 0.8 micron to 0.5 micron using three-layer metal, double poly and single metal. The company is multi-sourced, using Mitel in Canada, along with American Microsystems Inc. (AMI) in the U.S. and three or four others worldwide.

On the networking side Walter Hurwitz, ICS applications manager, communications products, said the company is striving to become significant contender in the Fast Ethernet processor arena. "Block by block, we are building a Fast Ethernet position," Hurwitz asserted.

Participation in standards setting organizations will likely give the company a leg up in this market. "Fast Ethernet systems designers are looking for cost-effective, standards-compliant IC solutions right up front. Our Fast Ethernet Alliance and IEEE committee participation assures that our new products meet these goals. We have also defined the ICS1889 and follow-on products to integrate special features that add function and value to the application."

ICS will introduce some of those follow-on products in the near future. "There will be further integration for repeater/switch based applications targeting specific customer requests. The next obvious step is twisted pair, which we will introduce in the next four to eight weeks."

Although ICS carries both Fast Ethernet and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) products, Mr. Hurwitz predicted that Fast Ethernet will outpace ATM in the market for the next year or two. "Fast Ethernet looks like it is going to take off a lot faster than ATM because there is a very focused set of products that are evolving for 10Base-T. It's evolutionary rather than revolutionary like ATM is with its multitude of scaling options."

Consequently, ICS has taken aim at the Fast Ethernet market. "Right now our main focus is Fast Ethernet. Our goal is to provide the most integrated feature sets to add real value to customer applications. For example, in the 1889 we have included `Quick Poll' which takes all pieces of status from other registers in the chip and places all of those in a single register. That way, you can access those in a single register access."

The new ICS1889 100Base-FX Integrated PHY-ceiver is said to be fully compliant with the ISO/IEC 8802 and IEEE Fast Ethernet standards for 100Base-FX and to contain all clock synthesis and recovery, 4B5B coding and MII (media independent interface) management and data interface functions. The chip is the second in a family the company began rolling out a couple of months ago with the introduction of the ICS1887 (EN, Feb. 20), a Fast Ethernet PHY (physical layer) device which operates at multiple data rates.

Features of the new ICS1889 include both half and full duplex operation, far-end fault detection, and an extended register set including Quick Poll detailed status monitoring. Media access controllers (MACs) can interface to the ICS1889 using the standard MII, and the Ethernet chip is also designed to be compatible with industry standard optical transceivers.

The ICS1889 will sample in a 52-pin, 14mm MQFP package in April, with volume shipments slated to follow by mid-year, priced at $23.40 each in 10,000-unit quantities.