RapidIO Connections - May 2004
Jennic Outlines its RapidIO Interface IP Strategy
Jennic sets out its intention to become the de-facto,
industry wide provider of RapidIO Interface IP cores.
Jennic is a provider of system-level Intellectual Property (IP) and design services to OEM and semiconductor vendors developing leading edge solutions for the broadband communications market. When Jennic joined the RapidIO Trade Association (RTA) in January 04, it announced its intention to become the leading provider of RapidIO Interface IP cores for this market.
Alongside the availability of embedded processor's, DSP's and switch fabric's, the availability of high quality, silicon proven IP is considered to be an essential component of the RapidIO eco-system. The establishment and cultivation of this eco-system will be a key facilitator in the adoption of the RapidIO standard.
Jennic's business model consists of providing standard, off-the-shelf IP cores, that meet the demands of most applications, but where necessary, complementing these by also offering design services to optimize or enhance them to address customers own, unique requirements.
Jennic's RapidIO customers span a broad spectrum of the industry and have a wide range of requirements in terms of the both functionality and target semiconductor technology. By taking account of these in the specification and the functional partitioning, Jennic is able to offer a range of solutions that will meet their diverse needs.
Jennic's RapidIO products provide a complete, fully integrated RapidIO solution consisting of the Physical Interface, Transport and Logical Layer Controllers and Host Bus Interface. While considering the top-level, system-wide issues from the outset, Jennic has been able to partition the functionality in the most efficient manner possible to address key issues such as reusability, silicon resource and key performance parameters such as latency and throughput. This approach contrasts with that taken by other IP providers, who have considered each layer in isolation, which can result in relatively inefficient implementations when viewed from the system-level perspective.
Jennic is able to offer fully customized solutions by re-using the same underlying architecture, but instantiating different functional blocks, including a customer’s own, or those from third party IP providers. This allows customers to get to tape out in a fraction of the time, for a significantly reduced cost, and with lower risk than if they where to attempt to develop such an interface themselves.
With today's market uncertainty and the very high cost of mask sets, customers are increasingly looking for low cost entry points into the design cycle for their products. By providing an IP roadmap that covers FPGA, Structured ASIC and traditional ASIC, Jennic is able to support customers migrating their designs between technologies as their products gain market traction. Jennic is working with a number of the leading vendors of these technologies to provide RapidIO IP cores implemented in their particular technology and demonstrating this capability in Test Chips.
For further technical or commercial information please contact Frank Newcombe, Jennic's Wireline IP Product Line Manager on either Frank.Newcombe@Jennic.com or +44 114 2814549, or refer to the website www.Jennic.com.
About Jennic
Jennic is a leading provider of Intellectual Property and silicon design services to the broadband communications market. Jennic combines its system expertise, advanced Intellectual Property portfolio and skills in digital, software, mixed-signal and SoC design to deliver performance, cost and time-to-market advantages to its system OEMs and semiconductor customers. Jennic’s Intellectual Property portfolio includes physical layer framers and bus bridges for wide and metro area networks, access network co-processors, line-card connectivity solutions and cellular, low power wireless and data mixed-signal systems.
Founded in 1996 Jennic has its headquarters in Sheffield, England.
