4Links offers boards, chips, IPR and consultancy, for links
Boards: PCI-1355 and IDE-1355, interfacing IEEE 1355 to PC and disk interfaces
Chips: CW-1355-C111 link adaptor PLD chip for 1355, and IC-Routings ICR C416 routing switch chip for OS-Links
IPR for C111 design, in PLD Jedec files, in source PLD files, and in VHDL
Consultancy in any aspect of links and switches, IEEE 1355, hardware design or modularity
Small demonstrator of OMI and HIC Integration SOHI
4Links boards and C111 chips were designed as alternative sources to those of SGS-THOMSON, to better meet the market need. With SGS’ proposed withdrawal from the 1355 market, these products do not fill all the gap. 4Links has therefore submitted the SOHI proposal to integrate 1355 with other OMI technology, and to demonstrate best practice for a small SME. In the process the SOHI proposal provides very low-cost 1355 chips and a new PCI board which offers the full potential of 1355, in both throughput and routing-switch capability. 4Links is also working with Nottingham Trent University, IC-Routing Ltd, Keele University, and members of the 1355 Association, to design larger valency routing switches to provide this fundamental benefit of 1355 technology.
Domestic Network Architecture DNA
Our homes already have several networks, but none of the networks talks to any other, and a single network is needed that can connect all the hundred or more chips in the home. As Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte point out, such a network would improve our quality of life as well as providing cost benefits and creating new appliances which can not exist without the network. Cook and Walker’s conference paper (session 7E), suggests the business opportunity could be up to 1000 devices in up to a billion homes, an opportunity far larger than for mobile phones! Such a huge market needs standards designed specifically for the market, and none of the existing networks, including 1355, is even adequate. The 1355 protocols, combined with speech commands and a physical layer more like RS232, may offer the right combination of low cost, scaleable performance, user-tolerance and fault-tolerance, privacy and security, that the domestic network needs. The new Framework V topic of "A User Friendly Information Society" should certainly include such networks for the home. The proposal is for an Exploratory Award, and partners interested in this huge opportunity should contact 4Links.
The DNA proposal includes a "House of Quality" or Quality Function Deployment (QFD) chart to list requirements and to evaluate or benchmark possible solutions against those requirements. Apart from the pun of using a House of Quality to design a Home Network, the technique can be useful for many aspects of design.ESSSI
: Evolutionary Switched Serial Studio Interface is a submission from 4Links to the EBU/SMPTE task force on standards for TV bit-streams. The submission builds on the 270Mbit/s over 300 metres of copper physical layer of the TV