AN ATM CHIP SET FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER INTERFACES, AFFORDING OVER 100 MBPS SUSTAINED THROUGHPUT

The transmission and processing of multimedia information requires a h igh-speed communications network infrastructure. This is especially tr ue for the networks between the user's computer and the information hi ghway. An Ethernet LAN is widely used for these networks, but it has l imited throughput. asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) LAN technology is a promising approach to overcome this limitation. We have developed a chip set which can Ire used to connect personal computers (PCs) and wo rkstations (WSs) to a 156-Mbps ATM LAN. The advanced architecture, opt imized performance and efficient buffer management enables a sustained more than 100 Mbps transfer speed to be obtained. The chip set is imp lemented in a 0.8 mu m triple metal-layer CMOS process to integrate to tal 460 K transistors and consumes total 4 W at 5 V.