Agere Systems Unveils Industry's First Single-Chip 48-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch and Lowest Power Octal PHY
November 08 2004 - 8:09AM
PR Newswire (US)
Agere Systems Unveils Industry's First Single-Chip 48-Port Gigabit
Ethernet Switch and Lowest Power Octal PHY Company's Octal PHY, at
500 mW Per Port, Is The Lowest Power PHY in the Industry; 48-Port
Switch Provides Twice the Capability of Any Other Single- Chip
Offering ALLENTOWN, Pa., Nov. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Agere
Systems (NYSE:AGR.ANYSE:AGR.B) today announced the availability of
the industry's first single-chip 48-port Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)
switching chip and the lowest power GbE octal physical layer device
(PHY) to offer enterprise networking equipment manufacturers the
lowest cost and power per port in the industry. The company is
currently shipping these chips to original design manufacturers
(ODMs) Accton Technology Corporation and Delta Networks, who make
enterprise switching gear for a global base of OEM customers.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040618/AGERELOGO ) The
company's new products target the growing market for GbE chips,
expected to exceed $1 billion in 2005, according to industry
analyst firm IDC. Agere's TruePHY(TM) ET1081 octal PHY has a power
consumption of less than 500 milliwatts per port. The powerful
combination of Agere's patent-pending TruePHY technology coupled
with the significant levels of integration on the single-chip
48-port switch provides manufacturers a 50 percent lower total chip
count and 35 percent lower power consumption which equates to
significantly lower overall cost of ownership. Agere's solution
uses seven chips -- one switch system on a chip (SoC) and six octal
PHYs -- to build a complete 48-port GbE switch with two 10 gigabits
per second (Gb/s) Ethernet ports. Competing solutions require as
many as 17 chips for the same solution. In a board level
environment, Agere's solution reduces the printed circuit board
space by about 30 percent and cuts the system failure rate in half.
"It has been less than a year since we acquired our switch business
and already we have achieved several significant milestones in the
GbE chip market. We've raised the bar for the industry in terms of
performance, and we're winning customers in the marketplace," said
Ed Roberts, vice president and general manager of Agere's Ethernet
business. "Together with the industry's lowest-power octal PHY,
Agere is providing the industry's most complete switch-on-a-chip
and multi-PHY system solution to most effectively address the
requirements for any enterprise switch. Our team has engineered a
new generation of silicon technology that significantly cuts system
level costs and development time and brings our customers a whole
range of new enhanced features." The Industry's First Single-Chip
48-port Switch The four new GbE switch-on-a-chip devices are part
of Agere's ET4K family of switching silicon. The ET4000 is a
single-chip switch device supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet
ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The ET4100 is a single-chip
switch device supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports, with
four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gb/s Ethernet ports. The
ET4001 is a single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000
Mb/s Ethernet ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The ET4101 is a
single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet
ports, four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gb/s Ethernet ports.
The ET4K family of switching devices are built upon an innovative
new architecture and application software algorithms that achieve
the industry's highest integration level while maintaining wire
speed performance. The ET4K architecture supports L2/L3/L4 packet
processing at wire speed, thus enabling throughput of more than 104
million packets per second. ET4K also offers a best-in-class access
control list (ACL) function, a feature essential to providing
network security, including the defense of denial of service
attacks. In addition to supporting IPv4, the ET4K family represents
one of the industry's first silicon solutions to support native
IPv6 capability. Shipping to Industry-Leading ODMs "Agere is the
first company to deliver a complete solution that works for our
next-generation switch platforms with the most integrated
multi-port chipset we have seen," said Ken Lu, co-founder and
senior vice president of Accton Technology Corporation. "Ethernet
technology is the core to Accton's focus. Because of its high level
of integration and extremely low power, we've designed the chip
into our ES4550 switching systems to deliver the high levels of
performance including compelling cost per port and power per port
metrics that are important to our OEM customers." Original design
manufacturers (ODMs) such as Accton and Delta are becoming
increasingly important in the electronics industry supply chain as
they provide system design and manufacturing capabilities for
original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who use their services.
"OEMs are increasingly asking us to provide higher port density and
lower power switching solutions," said James Chiang, product
manager at Delta Networks. "Agere's delivery of the ET4K family and
ET1081 octal PHY will enable us to deliver the promise of
competitive Gigabit Ethernet to our customers." The Industry's
Lowest-Power Octal PHY TruePHY technology enables the lowest total
power per port at the .13 micron technology node. The TruePHY
ET1081 octal device is ideally suited not only for bringing the
ultimate peak density of 48 ports in a 1U "pizza box" form factor,
but it is also highly desirable in fast growing 2U 96-port bladed
applications such as those utilizing the global Advanced
Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) standard. Also
inherent in the TruePHY architecture is the industry's most highly
advanced cable diagnostics, with the precision and accuracy to
pinpoint a break in 100 meters or more of standard CAT5 cabling. To
ensure seamless interoperability and faster customer validation,
Agere's TruePHY technology is compliant with University of New
Hampshire test specifications. These four ET4K switch SoCs and the
ET1081 octal TruePHY device are coming to market as part of Agere's
strategy to take share in the GbE networking silicon market with
the August 2003 acquisition of Irish GbE PHY specialist Massana
Ltd. and the January 2004 acquisition of Ethernet switch-on-chip
team TeraBlaze Inc. The Agere introductions come at a time when
Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony is becoming more prevalent and
sophisticated in the enterprise, as innovative OEMs add video
functionality as well as Power-over-Ethernet technology. Agere's
GbE switch silicon has been built and will continue to be built
with these technology trends in mind. All five devices announced
today are actively sampling and will be available in production
quantities in the first quarter of 2005. These products are already
designed into key ODM and OEM platforms. Customers in the U.S. may
call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center at 1-800-372-2447.
Customers in Canada may call 1-800-553-2448. Customers outside
those countries may call 1-610-712-4323. Fax inquiries may be
directed to 1-610-712-4106, or e-mail queries to . Written
inquiries should be sent to Agere Systems, Room 10A-301C, 1110
American Parkway NE, Lehigh Valley Central Campus, Allentown, PA,
18109, USA. Agere Systems is a global leader in semiconductors for
storage, wireless data, and public and enterprise networks. The
company's chips and software power a broad range of computing and
communications applications, from cell phones, PCs, PDAs, hard disk
drives and gaming devices to the world's most sophisticated
wireless and wireline networks. Agere's customers include the top
manufacturers of consumer electronics, communications and computing
equipment. Agere's products connect people to information and
entertainment at home, at work and on the road -- making personal
broadband a reality. More information about Agere is available on
its web site http://www.agere.com/. Agere is a registered trademark
and TruePHY, Agere Systems and the Agere Systems logo are
trademarks of Agere Systems Inc. This release contains
forward-looking statements based on information currently available
to Agere. Agere's actual results could differ materially from the
results stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to
a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties
include, but are not limited to, our ability to keep pace with
technological change, our dependence on new product development,
price and product competition, availability of manufacturing
capacity, customer demand for our products and services, general
industry and market conditions, and our reliance on major customers
and suppliers. For a further discussion of these and other risks
and uncertainties, see our annual report on Form 10-K for the
fiscal year ended September 30, 2003, and our quarterly report on
Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2004. Agere disclaims any
intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking
statements, whether as a result of new information, future events
or otherwise.
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040618/AGERELOGO
http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Agere Systems CONTACT:
Steven Goldsmith, +1-610-712-6737, +1-484-553-0419 (mobile), ; or
Vibha Agrawal, +1-610-712-1737, +1-908-256-6234 (mobile), , both of
Agere Systems Web site: http://www.agere.com/
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