Mindspeed Technologies Licenses Interconnect IP from Prism

Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. has licensed the multi-protocol SerDes (Serial/Deserializer) and DDR3/2 PHY solutions from Prism for its ASICs.

The Interconnect IP from Prism will provide Mindspeed with a high-performance and low-power interconnect solution for implementation on TSMC's 40G process technology.

The SerDes requirements of Mindspeed’s ASICs cover a number of protocols. According to Anil Mankar, the senior vice president of VLSI engineering at Mindspeed, theDDR3/2 PHY and multi-protocol SerDes from Prism are of high quality. They provide a flexible IP solution that will simplify the design process without compromising performance, power or silicon die area. Mindspeed Technologies (News - Alert) designs, develops and sells semiconductor networking solutions for communications applications in enterprise, access, metropolitan and wide area networks.

The multi-protocol SerDes solution from Prism is a macro that utilizes a scalable silicon proven architecture. This architecture provides data rates from 1.25 Gbps to 10.3125 Gbps. The protocols include SGMII, SRIO, PCI Express, USB 3.0, XAUI, SATA and 10G KR. The DDR3/2 Combo PHY solution from Prism is available in both wirebond and flipchip configurations. The DDR PHY provides a choice of 1.8V or 2.5V IO FETs. It is DFI Compliant and supports data rates up to 2133Mbps. Both SerDes and DDR3/2 solutions are available for licensing in 65nm and 45nm processes at Fujitsu (News - Alert) and TSMC.

According to Sundari Mitra, the chief executive officer of Prism Circuits, customers are often faced with design challenges that call for both high performance and low power in order to meet their application requirements. Mindspeed is renowned for its cutting-edge chip designs, and Prism is excited to provide its innovative Interconnect IP for its chip designs.

Prism Circuits specializes in silicon proven, low power, low jitter, high-data rate Interconnect Physical IP. This includes serial protocols such as 10G KR, CEI-11, USB3.0, PCIe Gen2, XAUI, OC-192, OTU 1/2/3/4, SFP+, SRIO, CPRI and SGMII and parallel interfaces like DDR 3/2 Combo PHYs and GDDR5. The robust design methodology of Prism ensures first-pass silicon success and the fast porting methodology enables proven designs to be moved quickly to new processes. Prism Circuits provides high-performance, low-power physical layer (PHY) solutions in CMOS technology.