Session 1: Interconnect Trends and Standards

Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at The Linley Group, presented an overview of interconnect technology, standards, and silicon trends. These will include PCIe, RapidIO, HyperTransport, Display Interfaces, and Ethernet at 10Gbps and beyond.

Session 2: Wireless Interconnects

This session focused on signal integrity issues and solutions for base stations, including remote radio heads.

Xilinx V6 / S6 FPGA-Based Targeted Design Platforms Accelerate Innovation
     Brent Przybus, Director, Platform Solutions, Xilinx

Xilinx's Virtex-6 device family and Targeted Design Platform approach enables improved customer design efficiency by reducing development time, helps them address critical solution requirements, and focus on product differentiation. The presentation showed a WCDMA digital front end radio demonstration highlighting a 3 carrier digital up converter (DUC) and 3 carrier crest factor reduction (CFR) processing engine implemented using Xilinx's System Generator™ for DSP software targeted to a Virtex-6 LX240T device on a Xilinx Base Targeted Design Platform.

Wireless Infrastructure Drives New Logical-Layer Innovation in System Interconnects and SoCs
     Greg Shippen, System Architect, Freescale

Modern interconnects have converged on similar link layers supporting reliable delivery and multi-lane expandability. The focus for innovation has now moved to the logical layer. Recent multicore System-on-Chip (SoC) devices impose a new set of logical layer requirements on system interconnects. The wireless basestation application, in particular with both high bandwidth "chip-rate" and slower "symbol-rate" over multiple streams, is representative of these new requirements. This presentation discussed in detail this application and why it has motivated new features in both interconnects and SoC devices and in the process created compelling new use models.

Session 3: Optical Interconnects

This session discussed optoelectric interconnects for the data center. It provided real-world examples of optical cables that can be used for scaleable interconnectivity.

Silicon Photonics-Enabled Low-Cost and High-Performance Optical Connectivity
     Marek Tlalka, VP of Marketing, Luxtera

IT managers and system architects are faced with tradeoffs between performance, operational expenditures, and capital expenditures when selecting connectivity solutions for data centers. Silicon Photonics enabled active optical cables provide a new alternative to traditional connectivity solutions. They offer the performance of optics at a lower cost and are well suited for point-to-point connectivity in data centers. The presentation discussed key building blocks of Silicon Photonics-based products and explored the advantages of this technology over existing solutions for data center.

The Seamless Use of Copper and Optics in High-Speed Interconnects
     Jan Meise, Director of Strategic Marketing, Finisar

In the past, data-center users have had to choose between using optical or copper physical interconnects at the time of system purchase. New high-speed interconnect standards are beginning to drive the convergence of those architectures, allowing users to choose at the time of deployment. This presentation focused on recent developments in various high-speed interconnects, power consumption, and the cost-effective use of a mixed passive-copper, active-copper, and active-optical cable network.

Session 4: 40GbE/100GbE interconnects

This session provided an overview of the 40GbE and 100GbE standards and the first technologies at an IP and silicon level to implement interconnects at these data rates.

High-Speed Ethernet: A Switching Vendor Perspective
     Alessandro Barbieri, Product Line Manager, Ethernet Switching, Cisco

The IEEE 802.3ba project will complete in 2010 marking the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Ethernet. This talk discussed a general update on IEEE standard activities, key technical challenges from a system perspective and market dynamics for future High-Speed Ethernet Networks.

Optical Transport for 40/100G Systems
     Keith Conroy, Architect, CTO Office, AppliedMicro

Growth in communication bandwidth is fueling the need for higher speed interconnects. This presentation discussed the physical layer interconnects for 40/100G interfaces describing electrical and optical interfaces for datacom as well as 100G datacom/telecom convergence.

Interlaken: The Future of High-Speed Interconnects
      Gregory Kam, Director of Applications Engineering, Sarance Technologies

This presentation began with a brief history of Interlaken and its roots, and continue through its rapid adoption into current and future markets. Ease of implementation will be highlighted, and contrasted the many differences in applications through FPGAs and ASICs.

10G, 40G, &100G Ethernet Processing with Speedster FPGAs
     Denny Scharf, Strategic Marketing Manager, Achronix Semiconductor

Interest in 40Gbps and 100Gbps network links is growing. These high-end applications require high-performing reconfigurable logic fabric, high-speed SerDes transceivers, and substantial memory bandwidth. This presentation included an overview of the requirements for 100Gbps systems, a walk through an Ethernet linecard implementation, and generalization to related applications (Infiniband, storage, video, etc.).

Request a free copy of the presentations by completing the registration form.

The seminar was targeted at OEMs, ODMs, board developers, software developers, press, and the financial community.

Information collected for this event will be shared with the sponsors paying for this seminar. This information will not be shared with companies other than the sponsors of this event.

Further questions?   Contact The Linley Group:
Phone: 1.800.413.2881 (toll free in US) or 1.408.281.1947 or email: customer service