Interpeak unveils next gen TCP/IP protocol stacks.

Interpeak continues its mission to provide communications solutions for embedded systems by releasing a new edition of its IPLITE TCP/IP v4 and v6 stack, tailored to Motorola's StarCore-based family of Digital Signal Processors.

This forms an extremely powerful communications solution, ideal for multi-channel, performance-intensive applications such as Internet Protocol (IP) telephony gateways, wireless infrastructure systems, and multi-channel modem banks.

Digital Signal Processors--DSPs--have become increasingly important components when designing modern communications solutions. The immense performance and versatility of recent DSP designs make them an ideal choice for high-end communications equipment, with demanding processing power requirements. Interpeak has leveraged this new DSP technology and created IPLITE--the first commercially available TCP/IP stack for DSPs that also supports IP version 6. IPv6 provides an almost unlimited amount of IP addresses, necessary to enable the future expansion of the IP Telephony and 3G wireless networks. It also employs the industry standard IPSec protocol to enable secure communication over the non-secure Internet.

The Motorola "Network-Ready" StarCore architecture-based MSC8101 was selected by Interpeak as a reference platform for the DSP edition of the IPLITE stack. With its outstanding processing power, the MSC8101 is well suited to handle time-consuming cryptographic calculations used in the IPSec and IKE security protocols. Since it contains a separate on-chip Communications Processor Module (CPM), the MSC8101 easily interfaces to Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) highways, Ethernet, and Asynchronous Transfer mode (ATM) backbones.

"Motorola's leading expertise in digital signal processors, combined with Interpeak's know-how in IP networking and embedded software has resulted in a very compact and cost effective solution for networked embedded systems", said Johan Fornaeus, CEO of Interpeak AB. "The support of both IPv6 and IPv4 as well as the availability of add-on security protocols such as IPSec and IKE allow systems built on IPLITE and MSC8101 to benefit from the full potential of networking services."

The IPLITE TCP/IP stack is scalable to allow undesired functionality to be removed and thus creating a minimum footprint. Users with extensive communications requirements have the possibility to upgrade to Interpeak IPNET, a full-featured routing stack using the same API as IPLITE. This enables a smooth migration from a single-interface protocol stack to a full-featured routing solution.

"Interpeak's IPLITE solution enables OEMs to benefit from standardized and compact TCP/IP stacks which are designed specifically to fit the required code size for Motorola's MSC8101 DSPs," said David Baczewski, Strategic Marketing Manager for Motorola's RF& DSP Infrastructure Division, "The combination of Motorola's network-ready DSPs and off-the-shelf IPv6 protocol stacks from Interpeak enable designers to deliver next generation systems while reducing time to market."

IPLITE for the Motorola MSC8101 is available as a drop-in solution for the OSEck real-time operating system, running on all boards supported by the RTOS. Since IPLITE only requires a minimum of operating system support, it can also easily be interfaced to in-house operating systems and control software.