Jennic announces Serial RapidIO to PCI Bridge

Sheffield, UK, 10th October 2005: Jennic, a supplier of system-level intellectual property (IP) cores and semiconductor solutions for the communications market, today announced the launch of its Serial RapidIOR to PCI Bridge.

Over the last year Jennic has established itself as the leading provider of system-level IP for Serial RapidIO interfaces. It has successfully demonstrated its IP working in a range of silicon technologies, including FPGA and structured ASIC, and has been selected by a number of ASIC vendors to provide IP for their partner programs. Responding to customer and market demand, Jennic has utilized this and its other interface IP cores to develop its first chip-level IP solution, a Serial RapidIO to PCI Bridge; other bridges in the pipeline include Serial RapidIO to PCI-Express and SPI-4.2.

"With the launch of Serial RapidIO products from the likes of Freescale, Tundra and TI, there is now a considerable demand from designers wanting to bridge from Serial RapidIO to a variety of other interface standards " said Iain Scott, executive director of the RapidIO Trade Association. "This requirement is driven from a number of angles, from customers wanting to utilize existing devices in Serial RapidIO systems currently under development, such as network processors and graphics controller chips, to those wanting to extend the capability of existing board level systems to utilize the system level capabilities of Serial RapidIO. A major driver is the growth in AdvancedTCA which supports the use of Serial RapidIO as the backplane switch fabric interconnect."

Frank Newcombe, business development manager of interconnect solutions at Jennic, said, "A significant number of our Serial RapidIO IP customers have been developing custom solutions to bridge between an existing interface standard and Serial RapidIO. As we have an intimate knowledge of Serial RapidIO and other interface standards, it makes sense for us to offer our customers a more integrated, chip level IP solution, leaving them to concentrate on the design and implementation of other areas of their products."

The Serial RapidIO to PCI Bridge appears as a bi-directional, transparent bridge between the two interfaces. By using address mapped windows, programmable translation parameters and integrated DMA controllers, data transactions between the two interfaces are handled with the minimum of host processor intervention. This allows the user to extend the functionality and performance of their existing PCI bus based systems by providing the capability to connect into a switched Serial RapidIO architecture.

Jennic will leverage its relationships with several leading semiconductor technology suppliers to provide the bridge as either an FPGA netlist , pre-programmed FPGA or an ASIC IP licence. This approach will enable Jennic to support customers undertaking prototyping and system level evaluation as well as providing a route to cost reduction and enhanced performance for when their products move into volume manufacturing.