RapidIO Connections - October 2002
Event Spotlight
RapidIO Scores with Educational Events
The next day during the annual general meeting, the organization's progress and highlights of the year were outlined by Greg Shippen of Motorola Semiconductor and Technical Working Group Chair; Tom Cox of Tundra Semiconductor and outgoing Marketing Working Group Chair; Dan Bouvier of Motorola and RapidIO Chairman; and Sam Fuller, RapidIO Trade Association President. The 2001-2002 year saw the completion and release of the serial specification, work on various specification tasks, and the completion of the Bus Functional Model and Hardware Inter-operability Platform (HIP) specification, among other achievements. Despite the severe economic downturn, the trade association continues to attract new members and remains stable as companies renew their membership. 
Over 125 engineers registered to attend the two-hour public training seminar that followed the general meeting. RedSwitch continued to extend its warm hospitality as the sponsor of the seminar, which featured presentations on RapidIO design and interconnects in general. The team of speakers included Robert Keist and Greg Shippen of Motorola Semiconductor, Ian Colloff of RedSwitch and David Somppi of Tundra Semiconductor. By the end of the day, the two live demonstrations in the rear of the room were packed, showcasing the efforts of Altera, Tektronix and Tundra in one display and the work of Xilinx and Agilent in the other.
A much shorter version of the educational seminar was offered in the RapidIO Trade Association booth at the Communications Design Conference, and continued to generate a high level of interest in the technology during the two days of the show. Motorola's Rakesh Ghai and Tundra's Jim Parisien and Victor Menace were the speakers with Altera, IBM, RedSwitch, Tektronix and Xilinx providing additional booth support. The combined technology demonstrations again attracted large audiences. Dan Bouvier also represented RapidIO at the conference's interconnect panel discussion (see www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020925S0020) Switch fabric interconnects have become a strategic design objective of many aspects of the market. The RapidIO Trade Association has become a valuable resource for educating the industry on the technical requirements for embedded, networking and communications markets. With the support of our member companies, we look forward to developing new opportunities to engage the industry in this important dialogue.  |
Batting a thousand, the RapidIO Trade Association has seen a series of successful events over the last few months. The association held two days of meetings, cumulating in a "sold out" public technical seminar that was held in conjunction with the third annual All-Members General Meeting in Santa Clara on August 22. A month later, the organization participated in the Communications Design Conference, exhibiting in an island booth that included live RapidIO technology demonstrations and ongoing educational presentations.
