GigaChip Alliance adds Xilinx to its roster and launches website

DesignCon 2011, SANTA CLARA, USA: MoSys Inc., a leading architect of serial chip-to-chip communications solutions that deliver unparalleled bandwidth performance for next generation networking systems and advanced system-on-chip (SoC) designs, announced that Xilinx Inc. has joined the GigaChip Alliance, an ecosystem of companies that support the GigaChip Interface.

Current alliance participants include: MoSys, Altera Corp., NetLogic Microsystems and Xilinx. In addition, MoSys announced the launch of the GigaChip Alliance website, which provides information regarding the GigaChip Interface and the GigaChip Alliance.

The GigaChip Interface is a short-reach, low-power serial interface, which enables highly efficient, high-bandwidth, low-latency performance not achievable using currently available serial protocols. Similar to the fundamental performance breakthrough achieved by the move to double data rate (DDR) style interfaces in the late ‘90s, MoSys believes the GigaChip Interface represents the next breakthrough in chip-to-chip communications using differential SerDes technology.

A 16-lane GigaChip Interface can replace up to six separate DDR3 parallel interface busses to memory, which represents a bandwidth density performance increase of four times, while reducing system power and interface costs by two to three times. Such bandwidth density increases will be required to realize line cards with aggregate throughput beyond 100G, a necessity in future high-end networking systems.

The GigaChip Interface has adopted the open CEI-11 electrical transport standard, making use of this existing electrical ecosystem in order to shorten time to market for the introduction of next generation system designs. Through the GigaChip Alliance, companies are enabling an entirely new class of low-cost, high-speed, high-performance systems in networking, computing and storage markets.

“As the world’s leading provider of programmable solutions, we are pleased to join the GigaChip Alliance and plan to support the GigaChip Interface in our FPGAs,” said Sanjay Charagulla, director, Corporate Strategic Planning at Xilinx. "We see a major trend towards serial chip-to-chip communications and believe the GigaChip Interface provides the efficiency and openness that our customers require."

"We couldn't be more pleased to have Xilinx join the GigaChip Alliance to support the proliferation of the GigaChip Interface into next generation networking systems,” stated David DeMaria, VP of Business Operations for MoSys. “Our goal is to revolutionize serial chip-to-chip communications with the GigaChip Interface. Towards that end, we are making the GigaChip Interface an open protocol and encouraging widespread use by potential partners and customers. The GigaChip Alliance will facilitate industry-wide adoption and evolution of this protocol.”

At the DesignCon 2011 conference being held from January 31 to February 3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, MoSys and Xilinx will be demonstrating interoperability between the MoSys Bandwidth Engine IC and Xilinx FPGAs using the GigaChip Interface. Demonstrations will be held at MoSys’ booth 516 on February 2 and 3 during the expo portion of the conference.