AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 22, 2006 — A ground-breaking multi-vendor demonstration that included 16 RapidIO(R) ecosystem members was held during the RapidIO Trade Association’s Boston Global Design Summit last week. During the demonstration, silicon from seven different semiconductor vendors interoperated within a common software application in the same system, for the first time. The demonstration showed the fundamental principals of RapidIO discovery, enumeration and initialization of multi-vendor devices in the same system using the network management and diagnostic tool produced by Fabric Embedded Tools Corporation called RapidFET.
“The key to a healthy ecosystem that fosters aggressive adoption of a technology by OEMs is a strong mix of semiconductor, board level hardware, board level software, and tool vendors,” said Tom Cox, executive director of the RapidIO Trade Association. “This extraordinary demonstration underscores the strength of the RapidIO ecosystem, the ability of the companies and their products to work together seamlessly, and the reason OEMs are embracing RapidIO as the interconnect architecture of choice in high performance designs.”
Produced by Fabric Embedded Tools for the RapidIO Trade Association, the multi-vendor demonstration illustrated the robustness of the ecosystem, and incorporated commercially available semiconductor vendor evaluation boards, production boards, software, and test tools. Agilent, as part of FuturePlus’s demonstration, Altera, CS Electronics, Embedded Planet, Fabric Embedded Tools, Freescale Semiconductor, FuturePlus Systems, IDT, Jennic, Mercury Computer, PMC-Sierra, Silicon Turnkey Express, Spectrum Digital, Texas Instruments, Tundra Semiconductor, and Zarlink all participated in the demonstration.
* Boards used in the demonstration were delivered by Embedded Planet, Jennic, Mercury Computer, PMC-Sierra, Spectrum Digital, and Silicon Turnkey Express.
* RapidIO silicon was provided by Texas Instruments, Freescale, IDT, PMC-Sierra, Tundra Semiconductor, Zarlink, and Altera.
* Jennic Ltd., provided RapidIO IP.
* Software was supplied by Fabric Embedded Tools.
* Test tools were contributed by Agilent, FuturePlus, and Fabric Embedded Tools.
Silicon Turnkey Express manufactured and delivered more than half of the evaluation board hardware for the demonstration. For more information on the products used in the demonstration visit the Member Spotlight at www.RapidIO.org .
The multi-vendor demonstration was held during the Global RapidIO Design Summit in Boston which drew more than 50 attendees who participated in highly interactive discussions on design, deployment and the RapidIO technology roadmap. “The response to this event was extremely positive, with significant discussions around design issues as they related to current projects,” said Tom Cox. “It was clear from the attendees that RapidIO designs are underway in virtually all segments of the embedded market.”
In addition to the Boston event, Global RapidIO Design Summits have been scheduled throughout Asia-Pacific this Fall. Summits will be held in Tokyo, Japan on October 20th and in Bangalore, India on November 29th. Details on these and other events can be found on www.RapidIO.org . Dates of these events are subject to change, and interested attendees are asked to check the web site often.
Hosted by the RapidIO Trade Association, the 2006 Global Design Summits are sponsored by Altera, AMCC, EMC, ENEA, Ericsson, Freescale Semiconductor, Lucent Technologies, Mercury Computer Systems, Micro Memory, MontaVista, PMC-Sierra, Rydal, Texas Instruments, Tundra Semiconductor Corporation, Wind River, and Xilinx.
The RapidIO Trade Association and its global members drive the RapidIO interconnect architecture. This ISO-certified, open-standard seamlessly enables the chip-to-chip, board-to-board, control, backplane and data plane interconnections needed in high-performance networking, communications and embedded systems.
The growth of the RapidIO ecosystem in 2005 seeded deployment of RapidIO technology in next generation wireless infrastructure, edge networking and military systems. Over 2006, the deployment of RapidIO will be furthered through RapidIO Trade Association initiatives including interoperability, interworking, the next Generation PHY Release, and system-level application demonstrations. Detailed information on the RapidIO specification, products, design tools, member companies, and membership is available at www.RapidIO.org .