Power X Announces Complete Chassis Based Reference Design

Power X Announces Complete Chassis Based Reference Design Reference design kit provides the means for network equipment vendors to save months of design time LIGHTSPEED EUROPE, LONDON, UK - DECEMBER 04, 2001 - Power X Networkstm today announces a complete 14-port reference design kit based on the award winning Star-200 TeraChannel® switch fabric chip set. This reference design includes many of the major components necessary to build an advanced blade based switch and will save network equipment vendors months of design and development effort. By expanding their extensive set of support tools, Power X is further enabling the development of intelligent, high performance metro edge switches and routers offering unparalleled levels of intelligent service provisioning. "Switch fabric sub systems are notoriously complex to specify and implement", said Russell Johnson, director of switching and routing semiconductors for respected telecommunications industry analyst firm RHK, Inc. "Switch fabric vendors that successfully address this issue, such as providing pre-engineered reference design kits like this one from Power X, should prove to accelerate the adoption rate of merchant silicon." The 14-port reference design fits in a 19" chassis and includes design information for a high-speed switching midplane, fabric cards with 1+1 redundancy, and line cards supporting data rates up to OC-48c. Features supported include line card hot swap, fabric card hot swap, fabric standby test, fabric failover and TeraChannel control and clocking signals. The high speed midplane is specifically designed and carefully routed to maximize the performance of the TeraChannel embedded high- speed serial links and provide all the interconnects between each of the switch fabric ICs. The design material will be delivered as schematics, layout files, bill of materials, and BSDL models. "Our industry leading chipset and support building blocks are created to provide our customers with a full range of time saving and pre-validated design tools," said Phil Mercer, CEO of Power X Networks. "These tools, like the RDK-214, further expand our design win and subsequent production shipment success rate." Further information on the reference design kit, known as the RDK-214, is available immediately for qualified customers, with the complete package available in early first quarter 2002. With this announcement, Power X provides the basis for network equipment engineers to design advanced networking systems rich with intelligent provisioning capability running at full OC-48c line rates. TeraChannel has received a series of industry awards for its patented global hierarchical arbitration and weighted bandwidth allocation schemes that deliver high throughput and low latency. In addition TeraChannel's 16 traffic classes per port and the ability to provision bandwidth per- class and per-connection at wire speed have been recognized by Power X customers as a critical component in their next generation switches and routers. About Power X and TeraChannel Intelligent Switch Fabric Technology Power X Networks is a global, privately owned silicon-and-development systems vendor with main offices in Manchester, England (Power X Ltd.), and San Jose, CA (Power X Networks, Inc.). TeraChannel Technology is an efficient, highly intelligent and scalable switch-fabric subsystem consisting of silicon, hardware, and software building blocks for use in communication and computer switching and routing systems utilizing multiprotocol optical transport and computing I/O protocols. TeraChannel silicon is fully integrated and capable of simultaneously prioritizing and switching cells and packets at wire speed. The TeraFrame hardware development platform and FabricSIM software simulation tools provide a complete design environment. TeraChannel received a SUPERQuest award in the Most Promising New Public Network Technology category at SUPERCOMM 2000. Power X Networks is a 2001 COMET Award winner for Most Innovative New Networking Technology Company. Power X is a founding member of the CSIX consortium, now part of the Network Processing Forum. For more information, contact Power X Networks at 408-456-2500 or +44-(0)-161-286- 2000, or visit the company's Web site at www.powerxnetworks.com. # # # Power X, the Power X logo, TeraChannel, FabricSIM, and TeraFrame are registered trademarks of Power X Ltd. Press Contacts: United Kingdom: Steve Kane Financial Dynamics Holborn Gate 26 Southampton Buildings London WC2A 1PB Phone: +44 207 269 7266 Steve.kane@fd.com North America: Sacha Arts Slider & Associates (408) 356-3099 sacha@sliderassociates.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2001/12/04/20011204BIT00270/bit0001.doc http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2001/12/04/20011204BIT00270/bit0001