Renesas, Cavium to deliver optimized reference designs for high-performance routers and switches

TOKYO, JAPAN & MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Renesas Technology Corp., one of the world’s leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions including Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) for advanced packet classification in networking platforms, and Cavium Networks, a leading provider of multi-core processors for networking, wireless, storage, video, and security applications, have established a strategic collaboration to deliver highly optimized, high-performance, joint reference design solutions for customers to seamlessly incorporate QUAD-Search TCAM functionality with OCTEON multi-core processors.

The companies will separately and jointly market these optimized reference designs to their OEM customers to deliver attractive cost, performance and time-to-market benefits for customer designs.

“Renesas has deep experience in supplying TCAMs to tier-one networking customers, and we are pleased to see Renesas enter the merchant TCAM market. Together we deliver a best-in-class solution that guarantees interoperability and rapid time to market for our mutual customers.”

The reference designs, based on the Cavium Networks OCTEON Multi-core MIPS64 processor family and the newly-announced Renesas QUAD-Search TCAMs, are targeted at high-end router and switch applications. The reference designs include pre-integrated hardware board designs along with optimized software drivers, APIs, and example applications. Renesas has been in the business of selling TCAMs for many years to selected customers, and now the TCAMs are available in the open market to all OEMs.

By utilizing the reference design solutions, network equipment manufacturers can have the assurance of complete interoperability between the OCTEON processor and the Renesas TCAM, and thereby design high-performance, packet-processing sub-systems that can address a wide variety of applications, including high-speed Forwarding (FIB), Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), Security management, and Quality of Service (QoS).

“Renesas’ QUAD-Search TCAMs deliver world-class performance, with very low power, at leading price/performance,” said Rajiv Khemani, vice president and general manager, Networking & Communications Division at Cavium Networks.

“Renesas has deep experience in supplying TCAMs to tier-one networking customers, and we are pleased to see Renesas enter the merchant TCAM market. Together we deliver a best-in-class solution that guarantees interoperability and rapid time to market for our mutual customers.”

“Cavium Networks’ OCTEON processors are an excellent complement to our new QUAD-Search TCAM portfolio,” said Michael Collins, senior director of Network Solutions Business Unit, Renesas Technology America Inc.

“Cavium has clearly demonstrated leadership in multi-layer packet processing with their vast array of innovative intelligent network processing solutions. By working with Cavium Networks, we can provide customers an optimal solution that combines the benefits of our latest classification technology with Cavium’s widely adopted OCTEON embedded multi-core processor family. Our reference design platform will streamline the development process for our mutual customers and enable highly-compelling new packet-processing systems.”