networkZONE Products for the week of February 5, 2007
Altera, National Semiconductor and MorethanIP Say…
Altera, National Semiconductor and MorethanIP Announce First 8-Port Switch Development Board With IEEE 1588 Timing Control
Jointly-Created Development Board Accelerates Design of Industrial Applications for Control and Automation Markets
Designers of next-generation industrial control and automation systems challenged by requirements of the IEEE 1588 standard for precision clock synchronization can now accelerate their connectivity designs with the first 8-port switch development board. The board provides key features essential to end products by combining devices and intellectual property (IP) from Altera Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation and Germany-based design and IP provider MorethanIP (MTIP).
The new reference board enables rapid implementation of the IEEE 1588 standard across a range of applications demanding sub-microsecond accuracy. This level of accuracy is critical for meeting strict communications latency and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements in the industrial connectivity market. Target applications are switches employing industrial standards like Ethernet/IP, ProfiNet, Ethernet Powerlink and other Ethernet protocols.
According to the 2005 Industrial Ethernet Worldwide Outlook by ARC Advisory Group, the industrial Ethernet switch market is estimated at 325,000 units in 2006, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49 percent. This market is seeing a heavy adoption of IEEE 1588-based technology.
The reference board includes 10/100-Mbps Ethernet media access controllers (MACs) compliant with the IEEE 802.3 standard, as well as supporting IEEE 1588 versions 1 and 2 for timing control with transparent end-to-end (E2E) and peer-to-peer (P2P) clock sequencing. It offers high port density with low pin count, RMII interfaces and a programmable uplink. Since the board incorporates the recently announced IP core from MorethanIP for Altera Stratix II and Cyclone II FPGAs, designers can quickly update designs when the second revision of the IEEE 1588 standard is completed in early 2007.
"This reference board makes designing flexible switch products far easier," said Francois Balay, CEO of MorethanIP. "The boards fully conform to specifications and will provide designers with a fast start on their next products."
The current board features Altera's Stratix II device and uses four DP83849 dual-port physical layer transceivers from National Semiconductor. This high-speed industrial connectivity design features the low deterministic latency required for precise clock synchronization and offers National's patent-pending Flex-Port switching for fully integrated range extension, media conversion and hardware-based failover. National's low-dropout and buck regulators power the FPGAs and transceivers. Future models will use a device from Altera's low-cost Cyclone family of FPGAs.
"Ethernet switch manufacturers now have a fully integrated switch solution applying the inherent flexibility of programmable logic," said Michael Samuelian, director of Altera's industrial business unit. "We are demonstrating our commitment to the industrial market by offering a fully integrated 8-port switch with IEEE 1588 compliance, which can be easily integrated into Altera FPGAs. This board speeds development time and enables designs to adapt to changing market requirements."
EN-Genius Says . . .
Altera's reference design for an Ethernet switch that supports the new IEEE 1588 time synchronization protocol is both a very timely product (no pun intended) and a clear demonstration of how FPGAs time-to-market advantages allow designers to bring a product to market well before ASICs or merchant silicon is available. IEEE 1588 is attracting lots of attention because it enables Ethernet, which has always been a non-deterministic, best-effort medium to support high-precision timing operations that are especially useful in industrial and wireless networks. (For more information on IEEE 1588, see Aligning System Clocks Over Networks With IEEE 1588 Remote Timing Standard, published here September 2006.) Freescale has already introduced a PowerQUICC processor that supports the protocol (reviewed here July 2006), but this is the first switch I know of to date that is designed specifically to support the lower latencies and deterministic handling of timing-related traffic that will enable IEEE 1588 to deliver its full accuracy.
MorethanIP claims that its FPGA firmware includes IEEE1588 Compliant MACs as well as full support for IEEE 1588 version 1 and version 2 transparent E2E and P2P clock sequencing. According to them, standard switches have no sense of the IEEE1588 timing packets and may insert non-deterministic latencies that can affect the accuracy of the 1588 end points.
While you can use nearly any MII/RMII-compliant PHY with this design, National's DP83849 is a good choice because it has extremely low deterministic latency which further improves end-to-end timing measurement accuracy. These PHYs also have built in TDR and SNR features that allow maintenance of the infrastructure by the system administrator such as finding a pinched or broken wire on a shop floor which tend to be overhead and near heavy machinery (as opposed to inside a wall for standard Ethernet).
This reference design allows you to get a basic design up and running quickly, add the custom features you need and get it to market fast. It is a nice pairing with National's PHYs and a switch architecture that can be easily customized to add the application-specific functions that will attract a loyal market segment and slow down the inevitable price erosion from generic me-too designs. While I suspect that merchant silicon may eventually provide solutions with lower BOM costs than this FPGA-based switch it will probably be some time (probably 12 - 24 months) before the demand for IEEE 1588-capable products will justify the tooling costs for a custom chip. During that time this nice combo should help you break into the emerging markets and get your customers products. And, if Altera can deliver on its promise to migrate the technology to its lower-priced Cyclone III series, you might well never have to consider tooling up an ASIC at all.
About the only item I'd ding this reference design on is that it does not support Gigabit Ethernet. It's only a minor drawback right now because 10/100 Mbit/s speeds are more than fast enough for today's (and many foreseeable future) industrial applications, but I wonder how long it will be before industrial users begin to clamor for GbE. I also suspect that one of the first places we'll see a large demand for IEEE 1588-capable GbE equipment will be in cellular backhaul links and other telecomm applications where precise timing information is essential. If we do see a large demand for timing-aware GbE, I hope National will reconsider its decision to not pursue the GbE PHY market. Although their reluctance to take on the Big Dogs like Broadcom, Marvell, and Vitesse is understandable, the unique capabilities their PHYs offer could give them a distinct edge if, and when, this market matures.
The reference board is available now for $995 and includes an IP license from MorethanIP.
Data Sheet Reference Design
Data Sheet National DP83849 PHY
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