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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug who wrote (11253)	5/6/1999 9:18:00 PM
From: Win-Lose-Draw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18016

All I can say is that with the current availability of FPGA's , large scale simulated testing is becoming easier. From what I've seen it seems pretty clear that NN could stand some improvement in the way it gets ASICs (and thus new products) out the door. From his comments, I suspect Brian Jervis knows this. That problem may be solved for NN anyway, since there are a host of startups designing ASICs for ATM now, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear NN switches will have lots of non-NN content. Giving up control of your hardware is definetely a double-edged sword, though.

To: Doug who wrote (11253)	5/6/1999 10:42:00 PM
From: gbh	Respond to of 18016

As you correctly state, the limitation is initial expense. Doug, as I've stated, the cost is but one limitation, even though, invariably its the most important. But even assuming unlimited resource, the lack of compatibility from one vendors library to another makes multi-sourcing ASICs impractical with the proliferation of "core" logic. All I can say is that with the current availability of FPGA's , large scale simulated testing is becoming easier. Well, this is silly. FPGAs are actually replacing ASICs in all but the most demanding and cost sensitive applications. Large Altera and Xilinx parts are simply incompatible. Fixed power and grounds on different pins, on like packages make drop in replacement a little dangerous <ggg>. Not to mention the same "core" issues mentioned above. And you've yet to address the CPU, LIU, and complex off-the-shelf parts such as Framers which simply have no pin compatible second source. BTW, you won't find many 2.4Gb/s LIUs in a DELL PC <g>. Gary