enetworks.com) Erlang Technology (www.erlangtech.com) Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. SWITCH FABRICS 304 NETWORK PROCESSORS IBM (www.chips.ibm.com) Internet Machines (www.internetmachines.com) MindSpeed (www.mindspeed.com) PetaSwitch (www.peta-switch.com) Sandburst (www.sandburst.com) Tau Networks (www.taunetworks.com) TeraChip (www.terachip.com) TeraCross (www.teracross.com) Vitesse (www.vitesse.com) Zagros Networks (www.zagrosnetworks.com) ZettaCom (www.zettacom.com) White papers and application notes discussing each company's technology approach are available from these companies directly. For readers who want to get a flavor of backplane technology, two introductory tutorials on back- plane-related design issues and signal integrity on multigigabit per sec links can be found at the IEC web site at www.iec.org/online/tutorials/design_backplane/ and www.iec.org/online/tutorials/ signal_integrity/. A couple of interesting articles on issues related to serdes influencing the backplane performance are: "Proper Serdes Selection Solves Serial Backplane Design Woes" by PMC-Sierra's Rachelle Trent. The article appeared in Communications Design magazine on November 21, 2002. It is also available online at www.commsedesign.com/story/OEG20021121S0005. "Design 5-Gbits/s serdes: Steering throug a Road Filled with Potholes", by TriCN's Ronald Nikel, Communications Systems Design, March 2, 2003. Available on line at: http://www.commsdesign. com/story/OEG20030327S0010. Also an interesting article on issues involving 10Gbps interfacing of switch fabrics is: "10 Gbits/s Switch Fabric Interface Shootout", by Tau Networks' Phil Brown, Communications Systems Design, January 3, 2003, available on line at: http://commsdesign.com/story/OEG20030103S0058. Another interesting article discussing how the maturing switch fabric technology has far-reach