Infineon Introduces R-MAC Family of ICs Enabling Integrated Voice, Video and Data Services Over Ethernet in Optical Networks

Nov 4, 2004 | Market News

Munich, Germany – November 4, 2004 –Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced the new R-MAC™ family of integrated circuits (ICs). Designed to improve Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) functionality in Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), the RPR Media-Access-Control (MAC) implementation combines the simplicity and bandwidth efficiency of Ethernet-based networks with the carrier-class features of SONET/SDH infrastructure. Infineon’s R-MAC family completes the company’s broad portfolio of framers and switching ICs and further strengthens its Data over SONET/SDH solution offerings for Metro Ethernet Services answering the increasing market demand for packet-based voice and data transport.

The single-chip R-MAC5 is the first member of the R-MAC family. It is a standard-compliant 5 Gbit/s RPR Media Access Controller allowing better integration of the benefits of RPR into SONET/SDH rings by supporting up to five rings in a complete RPR node compared to the existing solutions supporting only one-half ring per chip. In addition, the new IC is the industry’s first offering channelization, allowing telecom providers to create virtual RPR rings over the same physical ring and to use RPR technology as an overlay to existing SONET/SDH-networks. The built-in channelization and traffic-provisioning capabilities of R-MAC reduce capital and operations expenditure of telecom and service providers and enable them to manage and individually bill new revenue-generating Ethernet-based services to their customers. Main applications for R-MAC5 are next-generation ADMs, MSPPs, MSTPs, Edge and Core Routers, Ethernet Aggregation Switches and EPON Optical Line Terminations (OLTs).

“SONET/SDH and Ethernet are the de facto standards for transport connectivity in the metro and transport market. There is a tremendous push from service providers to offer new Ethernet-based services that are flexible to manage and fit into the existing network infrastructure. We envision RPR as a key technology that allows Service Providers to efficiently transport these new Ethernet Services over their networks,” said Christian Scherp, Vice President and General Manger, Wireline Communications Business Group, Infineon Technologies North America.

A recent market study by Infonetics Research expects that the growing use of collector rings to aggregate growing DSLAM and cable CMTS traffic will increase the use of Ethernet over SONET/SDH and RPR in collector rings for packet traffic, while also carrying video and TDM traffic. According to the Infonetics Research study, worldwide RPR (Ethernet over SONET/SDH and RPR over Ethernet) revenue hit US-dollar 323 million in 2003, and is expected to triple to US-Dollar 967 million by 2007 with an average yearly growth rate of 32 per cent.

About RPR

RPR is a state-of-the-art technique for making Ethernet service infrastructures in metropolitan networks as resilient as SONET/SDH rings, which support 50 millisecond protection switching. Supported by an IEEE standard, RPR enables service providers to deliver Internet services (such as IP, VoIP, and IP-Video) to metro areas at competitive cost and with high reliability. RPR transforms a chain of point-to-point paths that can be either SONET/SDH or Ethernet based to one single shared medium. It enables optimal and fair use of bandwidth for bursty and non-bursty traffic through highly efficient multiplexing, oversubscription and spatial reuse and is a key technology to implement quality-of-service-aware communication over a network that carries multimedia traffic.

About R-MAC

The first member of the R-MAC family, called R-MAC5, is available as a 5Gbit/s RPR Manager. It can be connected through dual SPI-3 interfaces to Ethernet-over-SONET (EoS) framers such as Infineon’s MetroMapper2.5G on the line side, and up to two SPI3 interfaces to a network processor or MPLS switching engine on the client side. Infineon also offers the option of using SPI-4.2 interfaces in another version of the product. RMAC 5 is a channelized RPR Manager that provides Media Access Control for 5 RPR rings or 10 ringlets. There are no restrictions on the bit rates of a ringlet supported by R-MAC5 except that both ringlets of one ring must use the same nominal rate and the aggregated bit rate of all ringlets must not exceed the 5 Gbit/s capacity of the R-MAC engine. Transparent channels may also be assigned. The Infineon R-MAC family is fully compliant with the final release of the RPR Standard 802.17 and complements the company’s product portfolio for Cost Efficient Metro Ethernet Solutions.

Infineon also offers a Data over SONET/SDH reference design including hardware and software. This evaluation board demonstrates the range of services that can be enabled with Infineon’s Metro Ethernet Solutions and includes RPR over SONET/SDH, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) services as well as IETF pseudo-wire based services such as VPWS and VPLS.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for the automotive and industrial sectors, for applications in the wired communication markets, secure mobile solutions as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2003 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 6.15 billion with about 32,300 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com.

Information Number

INFCOM200411.015

Press Photos

  • The single-chip R-MAC5 is a standard-compliant 5 Gbit/s RPR Media Access Controller allowing better integration of the benefits of RPR into SONET/SDH rings by supporting up to five rings in a complete RPR node compared to the existing  solutions supporting only one-half ring per chip.
    The single-chip R-MAC5 is a standard-compliant 5 Gbit/s RPR Media Access Controller allowing better integration of the benefits of RPR into SONET/SDH rings by supporting up to five rings in a complete RPR node compared to the existing solutions supporting only one-half ring per chip.
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