The Cortina Systems® CS3472 24-port Gigabit Ethernet Line Rate MAC (CS3472), a member of the Cortina Systems, Inc. (Cortina) Interlaken family, is the industry™s first 24-port Gigabit Ethernet Line Rate MAC that doubles the line rate bandwidth of existing SPI based MACs enabling higher density Enterprise and Metro Ethernet switches and routers.

The CS3472 integrates all SerDes, PHYs, MACs, classification and policing functions into a single device. All 24 ports can operate at both wire-speed and oversubscribed modes of operation. In the oversubscribed modes, the CS3472 offers extensive Quality of Service (QoS) for line cards through a combination of a deep packet classifier, 4 queues per ingress port, option for external packet buffer memory, and multiple scheduling modes.

The CS3472 connects to a packet processor through the highly versatile Interlaken interface (up to 8 lanes and up to 6.25 Gbps per lane, and 24 channels mapped to 24 GbE ports) or through dual XAUI interfaces. The device can operate in the following fundamental modes:

Line-rate: Host interface can sustain 24 Gbps bandwidth

Over-subscription using internal/external memory: Host interface can sustain lower than 24 Gbps bandwidth