InfiniBand switch chip runs at 10 Gbps on eight ports

The HDMP-2840 InfiniBand switch, which RedSwitch developed with Agilent Technologies (www.agilent.com), has eight full-duplex ports running at 10 Gbps, or 43 (Picture). You can use each port as a 43 port or as one 13 port. Each port has a 20-kbyte input buffer and 5-kbyte output buffer per port. An internal 16-kbyte unicast routing table holds as many as 16,383 entries. The device also has a 512-byte multicast table. It supports eight virtual lanes programmable to one, two, four, or eight lanes in addition to a management lane. Virtual-lane arbitration supports 32 of each high and low priority weight pairs.

The device can operate as a stand-alone device—that is, without microprocessor support—because of on-chip management agents or with a microprocessor for designs with their own management software. An I²C interface enables system configuration and passing of diagnostic commands using nonvolatile RAM. Built-in self-test and power-on self-test blocks provide additional testing. Worst-case power consumption is 18W. The HDMP-2840 is currently available for sampling, and volume production will begin in the first quarter of 2002. The device comes in a 400-ball CBGA and costs $600 (1000).

RedSwitch, 1-408-719-4888, www.redswitch.com.