AT&T Co’s Microelectronics has announced its entrant in the Ethernet and 10Base-T integrated chipset race. Last July, National Semiconductor Corp announced a similar product which combined the network interface controller, encoder-decoder and tranceiver onto a single chip. Standard Microsystems Corp is developing something similar, based on technology it bought from Western Digital Corp and Chips & Technologies Inc is about to start shipping a combined Token Ring and Ethernet chip set. AT&T’s design has a pair of chips imnplemented in CMOS technology. One chip, the T7231 LANpacer Controller, integrates the local network controller, XT and AT interface logic, memory arbitration and bus transceivers. It supports shared memory and automatically senses whether it is plugged into an 8-bit or 16-bit slot. The other chip, the T7213 Dual Interface Station Chip – DISC, integrates the physical layer media interface and encoder-decoder, and automatically chooses Ethernet or 10Base-T twisted-pair wire connections as appropriate. The T7231 LANpacer also includes the glue logic needed to interface it with shared memory in MS-DOS personal computers and has space for up to 64Kb of shared 16-bit RAM (a similar amount of 8-bit ROM or EPROM). When you order quantities of 10,000 or more, the pair of devices is priced at under $30 when they are purchased together and are out now.
