Integrated Device Technology
Low-Power, High-Performance Computing At Finger Tips

C.P. Snow, a famous English physical chemist and novelist, once said, “Technology is a doubled-edged sword. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” Interestingly, this notion holds true for the evolving computing space. Nearly one in every four CIOs in this sector claims that technology is getting in their way and slowing them down, by generating unimaginable volumes of data. Being an industry veteran, Sean Fan, Vice President and General Manager, Interface and Connectivity Division at Integrated Device Technology (IDT), understands this dual nature of technology and strives to provide the right kind of expertise to help companies tackle this issues.

IDT specializes in the development of a broad range of low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions that optimize the customers’ applications in key markets. In addition to their market-leading timing products, the company offers semiconductors targeting communications infrastructure–both wired and wireless–high-performance computing and power management. These products are used for next-generation development in areas such as 4G infrastructure, network communications, cloud data centers and power management for computing and mobile devices. “We have several leading solutions that contribute to a state-of-the art high-performance computing ecosystem. Some have called it ‘supercomputing at the edge,’ because we’re putting our solutions at the edge of wireless networks,” affirms Sean Fan, Vice President and General Manager, Interface and Connectivity Division, IDT. Traditional wireless networks only had processing to convert the radio data into IP packets. However, IDT has added an additional layer of processing by providing the base technologies required to place intelligent servers at the edge of the networks located with the base station. “Our technology includes low-latency interconnect, leading-edge high-speed memory interface products, a huge portfolio of timing solutions, and our power management ICs,” explains Fan. “All of these contribute to an effective high-performance computing system,” he adds.

IDT is working closely with several innovative companies and has a number of interesting ongoing projects.

The company’s association with Orange Silicon Valley, a division of the giant European telecom company, is an example of this. Orange has built a processing platform using IDT’s scalable x86 compute cluster and 20 Gbps RapidIO interconnect switches and bridges, to execute high-performance analytics on real-world social media traffic during the FIFA World Cup finals. “The partnership proved the viability of conducting real-time analysis of consumer interests and opinions during a large event like the World Cup matches,” claims Fan.

The company has worked hard to stake a leadership claim in high-performance computing, including having leadership roles in the Open Compute Project and the RapidIO Trade Association. “Our involvement in these groups ensures that we are up on the latest technologies and ideas, and that helps inform our business decisions,” notes Fan. This also helps the company to bring technology from one sector and use it in another—just like it did in HPC and financial trading sectors. IDT brought the mission critical experiences from aviation and the space markets over to HPC and on similar lines developed the same attributes that connect radar systems in a nose cone of an F-18 to be used for financial trading when millions of dollars in equities can be traded in milliseconds.

We are a market and technology leader in the memory interface solutions for servers and data centers

Moving ahead, the company is working on new products based around its recently introduced RapidIO 40-100 Gbps interface core. “This new core will be used in our upcoming RapidIO 40-100Gbps switching, bridging and processor products, and that includes a 100 ns latency RapidIO switch,” says Fan.“This technology space has lots of headroom, and we are just scratching the surface. As the market and technology leaders, we will continue investing in cutting-edge interconnect solutions that enable next-generation computing platforms,” he concludes.