Thumbs Up for HX Rev B
The HX Rev B Network Processor is back from the wafer, and running in the lab. Xelerated Xpress gives you the initial report on the world’s first 100G NPU production silicon. We met with Johan Westergren, hardware engineer.
Xpress: Were you nervous when you turned on the power on the first HX Rev B processor?
Johan Westergren: Excited is probably a better word for it. We have worked hard and made our preparation.
Xpress: How did the chip respond?
JW: We had an initial hick up, and yes, we got a bit nervous honestly. But it is very common that you set a parameter wrong. But once that was sorted, we could quickly move on to infrastructure tests. We ran BISTs on internal memories, we set clocks, and we ran basic functions on all subsystems. After the first business day, we had a multi- parallel test effort rolling.
Xpress: And what about the continuous progress?
JW: We work at a great pace and the chip behaves very well. We are keeping up with the test plan schedule.
Xpress: So what happens between now and product release in November?
JW: The test plan covers a range of cases, all of them well detailed, implemented and tested on the Rev A version of the HX network processor. System test run application scenarios to verify the chip against customer application types. In addition we have started characterization to validate how the chip behaves under different power and temp conditions.
Xpress: Can you say anything on the quality?
JW: This far it looks promising. We pay close attention to quality in the architecture and design of the chip, and it is in the testing environment you see how that starts to pay off.
Read all about the family of HX network processors, and the Carrier Ethernet solutions they empower.
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