On paper, PLX's road map for PCI-X and RapidIO designs shows the chips as extensions of PLX's current 9610 PCI bridge chips. But vice president of marketing Larry Chisvin said this is only an indicator of how the future chips would be used. Architecturally, the future PCI-X and RapidIO bridges and switching fabrics will heavily utilize fabric concepts developed at Sebring, Chisvin said. Jeff Rhodes, business manager for telecom system solutions there, said the biggest leap his group must make in touting its new PXP Intelligent Packet Transport platform is not in proving its performance, but in showing equipment partners the advantage of transporting all voice and data as IP packet flows. The message may be an old and familiar one to broadband packet-switch developers, Rhodes said, but it is still a bit radical for telephony traditionalists.
Customers can implement some pretty complex switching hierarchies.
The company will also add multiprotocol label-switching implementations to its PXP fabric in the near future, Rhodes said. All rights reserved.