Industrial Ethernet development board in CAT-5 & SFP versions

Nine Ways, the U.K. operation of its senior partner in Germany, MorethanIP GmbH, designed NetFusion to provide a complete platform for evaluating, developing and deploying 10/100/1000 industrial Ethernet switches, and is available in both CAT5 and fiber/Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) variants. The industrially deployed, all-in-one development product uses SmartFusion2 System on Modules (SOMs) to create designs allowing a wealth of legacy communications and infrastructure to connect with high-speed Ethernet and USB.

Other key features of NetFusion include little/no hardware development, a baseboard full of modern and legacy industrial interfaces for FPGA integration and a SOM that includes free support for Libero SoC, uCLinux and multiple IP cores.

The product can be used either in the format of an IP core Ethernet SWITCH development kit (as most of the hardware orientates network communications – hence the name NetFusion), or as an M2S-SOM SmartFusion2 trial and evaluation baseboard (more extensive interfaces than the more basic competitors), or finally as a fully ready-to-deploy industrial product solution to a user’s needs having developed customised software and IP core designs to tailor to intended product functionality.

“The unique features of Microsemi’s SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA, including its reliability, security, low power, high levels of integration and reduced total cost of ownership, are ideal for a variety of industrial Ethernet applications, and we are pleased the Nine Ways team sees the high value of this device,” said Bruce Weyer, Vice President and Business Unit Manager, Microsemi. “Nine Ways’ NetFusion is yet another example of the successful adoption of SmartFusion2 as we continue to increase our presence in the growing market for industrial networking. We also expect increased demand from partners and customers seeking to leverage our unique security features in this market.”

“As a development or reference design kit, the board enables powerful features of the SmartFusion2 to be realized and made full use of in the field, particularly in the industrial environment,” said Paul Bates, CEO, Nine Ways Research & Development Ltd. “In particular, a key focus of NetFusion is the industrial networking segment where it can host various applicable industrial switches in the SmartFusion2’s FPGA fabric. NetFusion development board helps customers to develop or migrate their designs in fast changing industrial networking landscape. This coupled with SmartFusion2 features like reliability, security and low-power make the solution suitable for developing high-performance SoC FPGA based industrial applications.”

Nine Ways is now offering NetFusion and NetFusion EXP to its customers.