Texas Instruments and 6WIND announce packet processing software optimized for TI's KeyStone II multicore processors

DALLAS, March 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) and 6WIND, the gold standard for software-defined networks, today announced support within the 6WINDGate™ software solution for TI's new scalable 28-nm multicore processors based on its recently announced KeyStone II multicore architecture. By providing a comprehensive, pre-integrated suite of packet processing software, 6WINDGate eliminates the need for TI's customers to invest their engineering resources into combining discrete protocols from multiple sources and/or designing custom optimizations. This enables OEMs to more easily design high performance, software upgradeable, power- and cost-efficient networking platforms for mobile and cloud infrastructure applications.

The 6WINDGate software provides a proven solution to the challenges of performance, scalability, software compatibility and time-to-market faced by developers of high-end networking equipment. 6WINDGate includes a full set of control plane modules, a high performance networking stack and a wide range of data plane protocols that have been specifically optimized to deliver maximum performance on TI's KeyStone II-based multicore processors. Maintaining full compatibility with standard Operating System APIs, the 6WINDGate fast path-based architecture enables OEMs to quickly migrate existing application software to TI's KeyStone II architecture, allowing the use of TI's on-chip network coprocessors, as well as reducing time to market and schedule risk.

"We are delighted to announce the addition of TI's KeyStone II support to the 6WINDGate packet processing software," said Eric Carmes, CEO of 6WIND. "Because it addresses critical issues in network bandwidth, scalability and Quality-of-Service, 6WINDGate has been adopted by multiple tier-one TEMs and is now deployed in two-thirds of the LTE networks worldwide. Our recently announced 6WINDGate Cloud Edition solution extends these benefits to cloud infrastructure. We have worked closely with TI to implement optimized support for its KeyStone II multicore architecture within 6WINDGate and look forward to delivering high performance software solutions to TI's OEM customers."

"We're constantly looking for ways to push the envelope with our KeyStone II multicore processors," said Ramesh Kumar, business manager, multicore processors, TI. "No multicore architecture matches the performance, flexibility and power efficiency of KeyStone II and our collaboration with 6WIND gives our customers the software support they need to quickly and easily develop high performance applications."

TI's scalable KeyStone II architecture includes support for both TMS320C66x digital signal processors (DSP) generation cores and multiple cache coherent quad ARM® Cortex™-A15 clusters, for a mixture of up to 32 DSP and RISC cores. The multicore architecture includes capacity expansion for SoC structural elements such as TeraNet, Multicore Navigator and Multicore Shared Memory Controller (MSMC). This expansion allows developers to fully utilize the capability of all processing elements, including ARM RISC cores, DSP cores and enhanced AccelerationPacs. RISC processing within KeyStone II has been significantly upgraded with the addition of quad ARM Cortex -A15 clusters, providing ultra-high performance at half the power consumption of traditional RISC cores.

Availability

6WINDGate support for TI's KeyStone II multicore processors will be available in the second half of 2012. For more information please visit www.6wind.com.

About TI's KeyStone multicore architecture

Texas Instruments' KeyStone multicore architecture is the platform for true multicore innovation, offering developers a robust portfolio of high performance, low-power multicore devices. Unleashing breakthrough performance, the KeyStone architecture is the foundation upon which TI's new TMS320C66x DSP generation was developed. KeyStone differs from any other multicore architecture as it has the capacity to provide full processing capability to every core in a multicore device. KeyStone-based devices are optimized for high performance markets including wireless base stations, mission critical, test and automation, medical imaging and high performance computing. Learn more at www.ti.com/multicore.

For more information:

• Watch TI's multicore Ask The Experts series
• Engage with engineers and TI experts on the TI E2E™ Community and Multicore Mix
• Follow TI on Twitter
• Become a fan of TI on Facebook
• Download 6WIND white papers
• Follow 6WIND on Twitter
• Participate in discussions on the Multicore Packet Processing Forum blog

About 6WIND

6WIND, the gold standard for software-defined networks, transforms mobile and cloud infrastructure by providing scalable, high-performance, low-latency networking software optimized for cost-effective hardware based on multicore processors, while enabling Network-as-a-Service capabilities that monetize network services such as bandwidth, QoS and security. The company's 6WINDGate™ software delivers sustainable competitive advantages to network operators, service providers, system integrators and network equipment providers. 6WIND is a privately owned company based near Paris, France with offices in Mountain View, California, Seoul, South Korea and Beijing, China. For more information, visit www.6wind.com.

About Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments semiconductor innovations help 90,000 customers unlock the possibilities of the world as it could be – smarter, safer, greener, healthier and more fun. Our commitment to building a better future is ingrained in everything we do – from the responsible manufacturing of our semiconductors, to caring for our employees, to giving back inside our communities. This is just the beginning of our story. Learn more at www.ti.com.

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SOURCE Texas Instruments Incorporated