10G Ethernet design open-sourced
If you have been following OpenSPARC release train, you probably noticed that Sun just open-sourced one of the critical blocks of the OpenSPARC T2 (aka Niagara2) processor - Network Interface Unit (NIU). Details of this release are here - OpenSPARC T2 Version 1.1.
NIU is an Ethernet to host interface bridge and supports up to four Ethernet ports and is designed to provide scalable, high performance packet processing, optimized for high throughput computing and networking architecture. Some of the key features of the NIU include: packet classification for load balancing, checksum CRC off loading, and channelized and locatable DMA support. For the network connectivity, supported port configurations include dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
OpenSPARC T2 v1.1 now also supports verification and synthesis flows on Linux running on x64 hardware platform. We hope this will significantly increase the user base of this product.
