Client business profile: TranSwitch Corporation is a leading innovator of high-speed VLSI solutions microchips, which, as a key component in telecommunications and data communications equipment, enables people throughout the world to communicate more readily and reliably via voice, fax, e-mail and multimedia.

TranSwitch's customers are the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) who supply systems for three communications end markets: the Public Network Infrastructure, the Internet Infrastructure and Corporate Wide Area Networks. Their 400-plus worldwide customers include the world's leading telecom and datacom OEMs.

Business Challenge: TranSwitch is a supplier of silicon solutions to the tele-communication and data-communication equipment manufacturers with offices around the globe including an offshore research and development facility in India. TranSwitch was designing Larissa, which is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) voice/data convergence solution for the multi-tenant unit (MTU) Internet Access Device (IAD) market. Larissa was being designed such that it can be placed on a printed circuit board along with some peripheral line devices, but with no other host CPU or controller. The host CPU actually resides on the Larissa device, and the users of Larissa may add their own software applications directly to the image downloaded at start-up. The scope of work was increasing by the day and the tape out deadline was fast approaching. Also, the amount of budget allocated for the project was quickly running out just on the R&D side of the hardware development and there was no progress on the software side of the SoC.

SAI's Solution: SAI, after initial due diligence, formulated a plan which would let the client achieve their objectives in the limited time frame. SAI defined a Statement of Work (SOW) to accomplish half of the remaining work offshore and the client development team would complete the other half under leadership of SAI Architect and Program Manager.

SAI offered a unique business model to TranSwitch. SAI billed a heavily reduced rate for the project in return for an upside percentage on the product revenue.

The design effort included the use of simulation tools for design, verification and profiling before tape-out, and development using a real time operating system (MicroC/OS). SAI team delivered high-level design, detail design and test plan documentation for each module to the client.

Porting of the third party off-the-shelf Frame Relay stack to the System-On-Chip (SoC) target involved re-architecture of buffer, memory and timer management subsystems to migrate to hardware based buffer allocation mechanism and optimizations for the underlying Operating System. The SNMP architecture involved porting the Uniform Call Distributor (UCD) SNMP agent to the target system.

A private MIB was defined using Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) and validated using industry standard verification tools for IP Quality of Service (QoS) and RIPv2. The IP QoS framework design comprised of a command line interface (CLI) and SNMP interface to provision policies, rules and criterions and enforce rules in the data path. FreeBSD RIPv2 was ported to the underlying target. All layer 2/3 applications were developed in a multi-threaded, multi-processor and load-balanced environment for high packet throughput.

Client Benefits: SAI successfully completed the Larissa project on time, on budget and proved to the client that their objectives were achievable even though the circumstances seemed overbearing. SAI has a track record of working on such challenging projects and this proved beneficial to the client who was faced with a fast approaching tape out deadline. SAI suggested its offshore business model to the client that resulted in immense cost savings for them.

Industry Relevance: In today’s fast paced business world new products and new technologies are emerging at a very fast rate. It is imperative for organizations to complete their product development cycles within the specified time period otherwise it leads to huge budget overruns. Launching products or solutions on time is very crucial to gain competitive advantage and get first mover advantage in any particular field.

The Larissa – a System-on-Chip Project illustrates how an organization faced with a tape out deadline and changing requirements was able to meet its business objective by partnering with SAI, an experienced embedded solutions provider and making use of their innovative offshore business delivery model. Many organizations are partnering with other organizations to successfully meet the demands of the dynamic business world and for staying ahead of their competitors.