Sonics is gearing up for the very high end networking market with the release of its SonicsGN solutions that in essence is network on a chip.
SonicsGN is not a physical chip, but an IP block that is set to compete against Arteris whose customers include Cavium Networks, HiSilicon, Intel, LG, ST-Ericsson and co-development partner Texas Instruments.
By including more than 200 cores in the design data rates from about 400 MHz on the company’s current Sonics SX products to 1 GHz. The Sonics SX technology maxed out a 64 cores per chip. “We were previously limited by what we could achieve in switching and spanning distances in a single clock cycle, so we used crossbars and shared buses,” said Drew Wingard, chief technology officer at Sonics.
Sonics new design will support ARM’s Amba 4 ACE technology, that will to extend cache coherency beyond host processor clusters to include other processors and cores on an SoC.
With the release of this IP block we will finally start to see some competition in the high end routing market – and that will hopefully lead to even more innovation and further price drops. Sonics is offering a variety of pricing schemes including a combination of subscription or up-front fees and per-chip royalties.S|A
Mads Ølholm
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