SiliconBackplane unsnarls memory bottlenecks

SiliconBackplane unsnarls memory bottlenecks
By EE Times
June 5, 2000 (2:44 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000605S0028

A new version of the SiliconBackplane MicroNetwork from Sonics Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) ups performance and attacks the communication bottlenecks and timing problems that plague system-on-chip (SoC) devices with shared-memory subsystems. Customers use the FastForward development tools that come with this this SoC-block communication management system to arrange cores and logic for optimum performance on a silicon backplane. When the SoC is taped out, the backplane becomes essentially a piece of intellectual-property (IP) glue logic tying the chip's blocks together, so Sonics draws an IP royalty.

Pete Heller, director of marketing, said Sonics has improved the shared-memory management of SiliconBackplane MicroNetwork in the version 2.1 upgrade, adding 128-bit-wide data paths and single-ported protocols. Now, operating frequencies top 250 MHz and effective SoC bandwidths exceed 4 Gbytes/second. Heller said the older version handled bandwi dth of up to 2 Gbytes/s.

Heller said Sonics customers have reported SiliconBackplane bandwidth utilization in excess of 80 percent for shared-memory-based SoC devices using on-board SRAM. With the new version, Sonics expects designers to attain over 90 percent SDRAM link efficiency while serving data flows from four or more traffic-initiating IP cores.

Heller said the company also plans to extend the system's performance to DRAM and has entered into a technology partnership with Denali Software Inc., noted for, among other things, its memory-modeling tools. Denali will create an on-chip DRAM controller with speedy links to the system that will be able to access off-chip DRAM with maximum performance, he said.

Version 2.1 will be available in the third quarter running on Sun workstations. Pricing starts at $125,000 for an IP license. Royalties are determined by user needs, applications and intended production volumes. See (www.sonicsinc.com.< /I>)