PETALUMA, Calif. -- Praesum Communications continues to expand its portfolio of switching solutions with SwitchKit IP support for the Xilinx developed Aurora protocol.

Aurora is a scalable, lightweight, link-layer protocol that is used to move data across point-to-point serial links. Unique features include support for logical channels comprised for 1 to n serial lanes, and low latency support for user defined, flow control mechanisms. Aurora provides a transparent interface to the physical serial links, allowing upper layers of proprietary or industry-standard protocols, such as Ethernet and TCP/IP, to easily use these high-speed serial links. Aurora is a royalty free, open protocol, and can be implemented in any silicon device/technology. Because its implementation requires fewer device resources than alternative serial protocols, Aurora has found wide acceptance in communications, storage infrastructure, and military-aerospace applications.

Praesum has built upon the Aurora specification by adding a flexible, lightweight switching layer. Features of the switching protocol include in-band management, multicast support, error monitoring, and error recovery. Another key feature is the ability to easily integrate application specific features such as load balancing and protocol bridging, allowing the designer to custom tailor the switching platform to their specific needs

The Aurora SwitchKit IP offering supports switch configurations from 4 to 24 ports and scalable core fabric bandwidths of 10, 20, or 40 Gbits per second in Xilinx Virtex™-4 FX FPGAs. Further, SwitchKit IP is highly optimized for the Virtex-4 FX architecture and an eight-port, 20 Gb core fabric switch will fit in a modest Virtex-4 FX20 device.

“We are pleased to see the Aurora ecosystem expand to include support for high-bandwidth switching applications”, said Ryan Carlson, Director of Marketing, High Speed Serial I/O Xilinx, Inc. “This significantly expands the range of applications that can be addressed by this popular high-speed serial protocol.”

Praesum Communications Inc.