Expand Your Semiconductor’s Market With Programmable Data Planes


In nearly every communication interface today, many challenges exist. Not only must networks manage high volumes of data traffic, they must also be highly aware of malicious data intrusions. With increasing data moving though these networks, combined with demand for faster response times and lower latency, high performance packet processors came into existence as these were the only mechanisms ... » read more

DSP Techniques For High-Speed SerDes


Sensors everywhere, more connected devices, and the rollout of smart everything has created a flood of data. The question now is how to best handle all of that data, where to process it, and how to move it locally and to the outside network. Madhumita Sanyal, technical product manager at Synopsys, talks about the need for continuous performance improvements in SerDes, PCIe, NRZ, and PAM4, and w... » read more

Connectivity Challenges In Industry 4.0


Industry 4.0 is characterized by interoperability (such as IIoT), information transparency (digital plant models: virtual copy of physical world), technical support (the ability of cyber-physical systems to support humans by executing various tasks), and decentralized decision-making. IIoT allows devices to be connected, creating a virtual copy of real-world data that allows operators to visual... » read more

Design Challenges Of High-Speed Wireline Transmitters


By Samad Parekh and Noman Hai The need for higher bandwidth networking equipment as well as connectivity in the cloud and hyperscale data centers is driving the switch technology transition from 25T (terabytes) to 50T and soon to 100T. The industry has chosen Ethernet to drive the switch market, using 112G SerDes technology today and next generation architectures being designed to operate at... » read more

The Vital Role Of 1.6T Networking In Emerging Technology


Although warehouses filled with acres of buzzing server racks may not seem like the most likely places to find exciting new technology, data centers play a crucial role in the emerging technologies of tomorrow. Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), metaverse, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) are all high-demand applications which rely on data centers to provide powerful ... » read more

Protecting High-Speed Network Traffic With MACsec


By Dana Neustadter and Jerry Lotto There is an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, driven by an exponential growth in the number of devices connected to the cloud and a broadening variety of sensors, applications, and services, resulting in an explosion of data traffic. This in turn, drives the proliferation of high bandwidth interfaces such as Ethernet, PCIe/CXL, and DDR to sustain faster... » read more

The Ethernet Standard: To IP And Beyond


Ethernet is ubiquitous—it is the core technology that defines the Internet and serves to connect the world in ways that people could not imagine even one generation ago. HPC clusters are working on solving the most challenging problems facing humanity—and cloud computing is the service hosting many of the application workloads struggling with these questions. While alternative network infra... » read more

Integrated Ethernet PCS And PHY IP For 400G/800G Hyperscale Data Centers


Ethernet has become the primary network protocol of choice for the required server-to-server communication in hyperscale data centers, as it allows hyperscalers to disaggregate network switches and install their software operating systems independently. Ethernet enables cost-effective, dense, open switches and networking technologies which reduce cost/power per bit with transistor scaling. Ethe... » read more

Accelerating 5G Baseband With Adaptive SoCs: Part II


In my previous blog, we discussed 5G split architectures with focus on the widely adopted option 7-2 split. In this article, we will cover the implementation of the fronthaul and L1 Hi-PHY for 5G base stations. The 5G distributed unit (DU) can be implemented to process fronthaul data with O-RAN processing and partial offload for Hi-PHY processing which includes the LDPC encoder, LDPC decoder an... » read more

The Rise Of SmartNICs


Network interface cards (NICs) have been on the market since shortly after the first PCs in the mid-1980s. However, over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of SmartNICs. What is a SmartNIC? The most basic definition of a SmartNIC is simply a programmable NIC. Others have overloaded the concept by heaping vast amounts of silicon and firmware into their implementations. A good work... » read more

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