Agere Systems Inc. 3
Product Brief
September 2001 AT M Interconnect
CelXpres
T8208
Description (continued)
The T8208 may be configured as an ATM or PHY level
device providing cell routing between UTOPIA and a
32-bit wide cell bus. In addition to the 32 data signals,
the bus has the following signals:
■Read clock
■Write clock
■Frame sync
■Acknowledge
ATM cells arriving from the UTOPIA interface may get
VPI and VCI translation and routing information from a
look-up table in external SRAM. An external synchro-
nous dyn amic rando m acc es s mem ory (S DRA M) is
used to extend the buffering for ATM cells destined for
the UTOPIA interface. This external SDRAM may be
partitioned into four or less independently sized queues
per PHY for a configuration of 32 MPHYs and two
queues per PHY or a programmable number of queues
per PHY for a configuration of 64 MPHYs. The four
queues may be used to support quality of service
(QoS) by directing different traffic categories to each
queue.
The
CelXpres
T8208 provides a shared UTOPIA mode,
which allows two devices on different cell buses to
share the same UTOPIA bus in ATM mode. Using a
glueless interface, the two T8208 devices resolve
queue priorities and arbitrate the use of the UTOPIA
bus. This shared mode can be used to provide redun-
dancy or increase UTOPIA traffic capacity by support-
ing traffic from multiple cell buses.
The
CelXpres
T8208 supports the transport of control
and loopback cells with an external microprocessor.
Control or loopback cells may be sent or received
through the microprocessor interface. The 8-bit micro-
processor interface may be configured to be
Motorola
or
Intel
compatible and is used to configure and moni-
tor the device.
Figure 2 illustrates the use of the
CelXpres
T8208 in a
system with dual backplane cell buses using shared
UTOPIA mode. In this configuration, both T8208
devices on each card receive ce lls from the UTOPIA
bus, and each device uses its translation table to deter-
mine if the cell should be transmitted on its backplane
cell bus. In the egress direction, each T8208 device
receives cells from its cell bus to transmit on the UTO-
PIA bus. MPHY arbitration and queue priorities are
resolved using a six-wire interface between the two
devices. Although a single ATM virtual connection is
not typically established on both backplane cell buses
simultaneously, no restrictions exist for a single PHY
utilizing both backplane cell buses for different virtual
connections supporting higher throughput from two
bus interfaces. Redundant bus configurations can be
supported in the event of a bus failure with T8208
devices by configuring one device to assume bus
responsibility from the other.
In addition to higher performance, the T8208 features
numerous enhancements that facilitate various config-
urations for ATM traffic management.