IDT Rapidio Gen2 Switch Selected For High Speed Interconnect On Texas Instruments

Now, designers can begin development on TI’s TCI6616 wireless base station System-on-Chip (SoC) for low latency, high performance and robust features to prototype 3G/4G wireless systems, significantly improving time to market. The inherent efficiency and software scalability of RapidIO in clustering large numbers of digital signal processors (DSPs) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) on boards and over backplanes makes it the most effective interconnect choice for today’s wireless systems.

The IDT CPS-1616 belongs to IDT’s extensive portfolio of RapidIO Gen2 switches, supporting up to 20 Gbps per link for use as a chip-to-chip, board-to-board, and chassis-to-chassis interconnect. RapidIO enables OEMs in the 4G wireless and industrial markets to design embedded systems with clusters of DSPs that communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion while also providing high reliability, very low 100ns cut through latency, and simplified system memory maps. The use of RapidIO in TI’s TCI6616 EVM is a testament to the widespread adoption of the interconnect standard within the wireless infrastructure market.

“We’re incorporating IDT’s CPS-1616 RapidIO Gen2 switch on our EVM because of the scalability benefits it offers our customers,” said Kathy Brown, wireless base station infrastructure business manager, Texas Instruments. “We are now delivering the industry’s best and most mature RapidIO interfaces for interconnectivity across a broad portfolio of our wireless base station SoCs.”

“We’re pleased that TI has selected IDT’s RapidIO switch for its wireless base station reference design” said Fred Zust, vice president of the Communications Division at IDT. “RapidIO is the ideal choice for clustering endpoints that require peer-to-peer communication, reliability, scalability, and high-performance in a single interconnect. Although there are several interfaces such as PCI Express and Gigabit Ethernet available on these DSPs and SoCs, customers continue to make use of RapidIO as the primary interconnect due to the advantages it offers. As a result, our customers can deploy smaller form factor base stations with more processing capacity in a more distributed network deployment model, delivering superior coverage, higher data rates and more services per 4G subscriber.”