The Tsi578™ is Tundra’s third-generation Serial RapidIO Switch. Supporting 80 Gbps aggregate bandwidth, the Tsi578 enables customers to develop high-performance systems at low cost. The device is targeted at the following:

• Chip-to-chip DSP and processor aggregation
• Board-to-board backplane interconnect
• Chassis-to-chassis interconnect over copper or optics

The Tsi578 can be configured as a 16-port x1 switch or an 8-port x4 switch (or various combinations of x1 and x4). Each of the ports can operate at 1.25 Gbaud, 2.5 Gbaud, or 3.125 Gbaud.

Building on the industry-leading Tsi568A™ RapidIO Switch, the Tsi578 contains all the benefits of its predecessor plus it enhances the fabric switching capabilities through the addition of:

• Multicasting
• Traffic management through scheduling algorithms,
  programmable buffer depth
• Fabric performance monitoring to supervise and manage traffic flow

Embedded applications further benefit from the ability to route packets to over 64,000 RapidIO endpoints through per port hierarchical lookup tables, independent unicast and multicast routing mechanisms, and error management extensions that provide proactive issue notification to the fabric controller.

The Tsi578 supports both in-band RapidIO access to registers or out-of-band access to the full fabric register set through its I²C interface.  

Business Benefits

Improves Overall System Performance

• Easy implementation of distributed processing between DSPs in clusters
• Frees up DSPs resources for actual application processing versus terminating protocol stacks in software
• Superior real-time image processing resolution, size and frames per second in military and medical imaging systems
• Multicast feature results in real-time replication of packet data across all ports supporting real-time data distribution application, such as Video Head End Infrastructure or Wireless Data networking

Reduced Power Dissipation

• Tunable power per port to optimize budget for application. With competing synchronous switches all ports must operate at the frequency of the highest speed port resulting in higher power dissipation.
• Lower power switch using industry leading PHY technology

System Level Design and Cost Reduction

• Tsi578 uses similar voltage and clock sources as companion DSPs used in the same applications, resulting in simplified board design.
• The Tsi578 requires only one clock input which reduces complexity of clock circuit design
• Lane swap simplifies design of routing on board by logically matching lanes in the Tsi578 to the ordering of lanes in companion components
• Tsi578 features support superior signal integrity at the board and system level

Utilizing Tundra's industry-proven Tsi578 16/8 RapidIO switch the Tsi578™ MicroTCA Switching Module (MSM™) partners the technology of Ericsson, the leading wireless infrastructure provider to provide switching functionality for a MicroTCA system.	The Tsi578 Serial RapidIO Development Platform enables customers to exercise the functionality of both Serial RapidIO and theTsi578 in a real-world application which canexpand to meet any system requirement.
Tundra partners the technology of Freescale Semiconductor, with Tundra’s industry-proven Tsi578 to create an AMC form-factor development platform. The AMC combines the industry's highest performing programmable DSPs and the lowest power Serial RapidIO switch available.