IDT ships over 2.5 million RapidIO switches to date

SAN JOSE, USA: Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) announced that it has shipped over 2.5 million Serial RapidIO switches into customer systems. The proliferation of RapidIO is a direct result of the performance benefits it brings to high-bandwidth applications, such as 4G and 3G wireless base stations.

RapidIO’s superiority is demonstrated by the fact that it is deployed in virtually 100 percent of all 4G/LTE systems and 60 percent of new 3G systems worldwide. In China, RapidIO has captured almost 100 percent of the 3G market.

Serial RapidIO is a high-performance packet-switched interconnect technology providing measurable benefits versus 10 GbE. Its inherent advantages in throughput, latency, jitter performance, quality of service, and overall system power utilization make it ideal for a myriad of embedded systems in wireless, imaging, video, computing, and industrial applications.

IDT offers the industry’s leading portfolio of RapidIO switches and bridges, which connect ASICs, FPGAs, DSPs and processors, including x86, PowerPC, MIPs and ARM. RapidIO Gen2 has the lowest switch latency of all embedded interconnects at 100 ns, and connects endpoints at up to 20 Gbps per port. In comparison to integrated 10 GbE, RapidIO delivers an order of magnitude better end-to-end packet termination latency and twice the bandwidth.

“IDT is proud to be the leading supplier of RapidIO interconnect solutions and the recipient of continued customer loyalty. The delivery of 2.5M units is a significant milestone that demonstrates the breadth of RapidIO’s deployment,” said Tom Sparkman, VP and GM of Communications Division at IDT. “RapidIO excels in performance-driven markets where its protocol advantages in multi-processor peer-to-peer networks offer a compelling value proposition over other interconnects. As the de-facto standard for 4G wireless base stations, we expect the demand for RapidIO solutions to continue to grow.”

“RapidIO has had a significant impact on how 3G and 4G base stations are designed compared with previous generations. The RapidIO standard was driven by many of the wireless OEMs that now make use of it along with the semiconductor and tool vendors that support these OEMs,” said Sergis Mushell, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The standard addresses the key performance and reliability requirements for these designs, and the number of RapidIO switches shipped to date is indicative of the penetration of RapidIO within this market.”