Ottawa, Ontario – June 15, 2005 – Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSX:TUN), the leader in System Interconnect, today strengthened its position as the industry’s leading supplier of host bridges for PowerPC by announcing the details of its roadmap and vision for next-generation host bridges supporting PowerPC processor-based designs. By aligning their PowerPC-based designs with this high performance roadmap customers can take advantage of best system performance, best system cost, best system power, and best signal integrity.
Setting the Standard For Over A Decade
Building on a decade of investment and expertise of supporting PowerPC processor-based designs, Tundra continues to expand its portfolio of companion devices that deliver industry-leading system performance, power and cost for customers in the communications, pervasive computing, military, and industrial automation markets. Tundra’s earlier devices are well suited for 60x-bus based processors and Freescale Semiconductor’s line of PowerQUICCTM processors and include: PowerSpanTM, PowerSpanTM II, PowerProTM, and QSpanTM II. As a result of the acquisition of Freescale’s host bridge product line in 2003, Tundra enhanced its offerings with the Tsi106TM and the Tsi107TM. More recently, the roll out of the Tundra Tsi108TM family of next-generation host bridges including, the Tsi108 and new Tsi108ATM has underscored Tundra’s role as the industry’s leading supplier of companion chips for Freescale Semiconductor and IBM’s PowerPC processors.
Compelling Roadmap for the Future
Host bridges (also known as system controllers) interconnect processors with subsystems in embedded designs. Tundra’s host bridge roadmap for PowerPC reflects the investment and commitment to addressing the current and future needs of PowerPC processor-based designs. Future host bridges will continue to be aligned with Tundra’s focus on delivering best system performance, best system cost, and best system power to customers. With a choice of two distinct solution paths, customers can either choose a highly integrated high performance path or offerings with reduced feature sets focused on system cost optimization. By providing software compatibility across the family of bridges, designers can maintain their software investment while taking advantage of the latest generation of devices.
The Tsi108 family will continue to grow with variants that increase performance through higher speed CPU and memory interfaces, lower memory latency, and multiprocessor support. In addition, as the system interconnect landscape migrates from parallel standards towards high-speed serial fabrics, there will be significant increases in next-generation interconnect performance. Customers will benefit from Tundra’s RapidIO® leadership and ongoing investment as high speed serial interconnects such as RapidIO and PCI Express® become part of host bridge interconnect offerings.
The high performance roadmap will continue to optimize system power through integration of key features such as clock generation, support of power efficient high performance memory such as DDR2, and advanced features such as dynamic power management. Cost sensitive applications will be addressed through various offerings that are focused on offering best system performance-per-dollar through reduced functionality and board space. Tundra will continue to focus on offering products with best signal integrity benefits to ease the challenge of high-speed designs faced by customers. This is evident in the Tsi108 and Tsi108A packaging, ball map, and input/output (I/O) features which were all designed with signal integrity in mind and will also to be evident in future devices.
Endorsed by the Industry Leaders
“The PowerPC space is undergoing two new transitions. First, the performance and low power of PowerPC processors is being incorporated into new, cost sensitive applications, like printers and gaming. Second, the system interconnect migration from parallel standards to serial fabrics, such as serial RapidIO and PCI Express, is enabling significant increases in system performance,” said Christopher Kissel, Industry Analyst at In-Stat. “Tundra’s portfolio of high performance PowerPC host bridges and their associated roadmap addresses these new transitions and provides customers with compelling reasons to continue to grow their investment in PowerPC-based applications.”
“We are excited about the Tundra PowerPC companion chip roadmap as it demonstrates Tundra’s leadership in delivering best-in-class host bridges that optimize overall system performance, power, and cost” said Bill Dunnigan, Vice President at Freescale Semiconductor and General Manager of Freescale’s Computing Platforms Division. “Our complementary roadmaps offer customers innovative architectures, compelling price and low power combinations, world class technical support, and significant performance advantages for an increasing range of applications.”
“When combined with PowerPC processors, specifically the IBM 750FL and 750GL, Tundra’s portfolio of next-generation PowerPC host bridges offers system performance with a focus on optimizing both power and cost,” said Mark Ireland, Manager of IBM’s Semiconductor Marketing.
Tundra’s roadmap for future host bridges was produced in collaboration with Freescale and IBM as well as from in-depth discussions with its key PowerPC customers. Tundra has been actively sharing the details of its host bridge roadmap with customers since the beginning of this year, and the overwhelming feedback is that it addresses designers’ requirements for greater performance in next-generation power and cost sensitive applications.
About Tundra
Tundra Semiconductor Corporation delivers standards-based System Interconnect for use by the world’s leading communications, networking, storage system, and information technology vendors. Tundra System Interconnect allows customers to link critical system components while compressing development cycles and maximizing performance. Applications include wireless infrastructure, storage networking, network access, military use, industrial automation, and information technology. For more information, please visit www.tundra.com.