19-01-2024 | Microchip Technology | Test & Measurement
Microchip Technology has announced its next-generation of LAN969x Ethernet switches with TSN, scalable bandwidths from 46Gbps to 102Gbps and a powerful 1GHz single-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU.
The switches can be configured with High-availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) and Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) for applications that need greater redundancy. HSR and PRP are hardware protocols that deliver zero-loss redundancy in Ethernet networks. The Ethernet switches support multiple HSR and PRP Redundancy Box (RedBox) instances that can run in parallel and series and at Ethernet port speeds from 10Mbps to 10Gbps.
The switches can implement a QuadBox, which is a function that connects two HSR networks. This feature is especially useful in applications where high reliability and zero downtime are critical. Alternative solutions implementing a QuadBox commonly require multiple components that can drive up design complexity and system costs.
"Prior to the introduction of Microchip's LAN969x Ethernet switches, customers who wanted to implement TSN and HSR/PRP features required multiple ICs. Microchip's new LAN969x solution is a single chip that can reduce the number of components and system level costs," said Charles Forni, vice president of Microchip's USB and networking business unit. "These devices are also supported with our VSC6817SDK IStaX Linux application software package that can enable designers to quickly bring products to market."
The Ethernet switches are highly configurable, with options of up to 30 ports. The Ethernet ports support multiple interfaces, including RGMII, SGMII, QSGMII, USGMII, and USXGMII. The LAN969x family targets secure and safety-critical applications where high- port-count 10M/100M/1G/2.5G/10G switching links are needed.
The family is offered with security add-ons such as secure boot and secure firmware execution based on the customer's root-of-trust manufacturing process. Security is supplied through Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM)-based frame processing using a Versatile Content Aware Processor (VCAP), Arm Trusted Firmware methodology for fast secure boot, crypto libraries and hardware security accelerators for boot and code encryption, and one-time programmable immutable key storage.
The new family of mid-range Ethernet switches rounds out the company's portfolio of TSN switches. The SparX-5i family supports up to 64 ports and 200Gbps of switching bandwidth, while the LAN9662 and LAN9668 support from four to eight ports and 4Gbps to 11Gbps of switch bandwidth.
The EV23X71A Evaluation Board supports this family of Ethernet switches. Other resources include the IStaX VSC6817SDK Linux Application Software Package to support TSN standards and HSR/PRP redundancy.
