Arasan intros Ethernet technology for real-time environments

SAN JOSE, USA: Arasan Chip Systems Inc. is presenting a paper titled - "Expand Ethernet to Real-Time Environments", at the Ethernet Technology Summit to be held between February 24-25, 2010 in San Jose.

The presentation highlights the growing need for hardware supporting IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) in networked environments around factory automation systems, test and measurement equipment, network operations management systems.

The Ethernet Technology Summit is a leading conference dedicated solely to Ethernet technologies. The conference features presentations, panel discussions, workshops from experts on the latest developments in Ethernet. Presenting Arasan's paper will be Chandan Egbert, Senior Director of Engineering at Arasan.

According to Egbert: "The use of Ethernet for accurate clock synchronization in real-time environments had been hampered by its lack of deterministic delivery mechanism. However, by enhancing the Ethernet MAC and protocol stacks to support IEEE 1588, network operators and system developers can now support real-time operations using Ethernet." Arasan's Ethernet MAC IP provides this enhanced support.

"This year's Ethernet Technology Summit highlights the expansion of Ethernet technologies into new, high-performance networking domains," said Dr. Lance A. Leventhal, Program Chairperson of the 2010 Ethernet Technology Summit. "Networking chipset developers rely on IP providers such as Arasan Chip Systems to bring innovative Ethernet solutions to these new domains."

While other clock synchronization schemes exist, IEEE 1588 PTP implemented over Ethernet offers a scalable, economical solution for clock synchronization across distributed systems. Arasan's Ethernet IP with IEEE 1588 support enables these distributed systems to select a master clock amongst alternatives and compensate for network delay and jitter while keeping the remainder (slave) clocks in tight synchronization with the master.

Based on this tight clock synchronization, wireline and wireless network operators can also use IP/Ethernet as the single backhaul network to carry both 2G/3G voice and IP/Ethernet packet traffic instead of using a hybrid two-network approach.

Arasan's Ethernet IP core parses the standard IEEE 1588 frames and has hardware time-stamping for both ingress and egress frames performed at the respective ports. The core implements accurate time monitoring and is capable of synchronizing with an external timer. The IP also includes timers and event synchronization blocks to generate external events based on received PTP packets.

The integration of this functionality improves the accuracy as well as reduces the BOM for supporting IEEE 1588 over an Ethernet infrastructure.