SAN JOSE, Calif., March 13, 2000 -- Leading high-bandwidth network IC provider Allayer Communications today announced the industry's first chipset for the design of Gigabit, Layer 3/4 Ethernet Switches. The chipset will reduce the chip count and the cost of designing high-performance switches for workgroups, enterprises and the Internet.

The two devices in the chipset include the AL1022 two-port, Gigabit Ethernet Switch chip, and the AL3000 high-performance Layer 3/4 routing engine that also provides the network management. Each device contains a 12.8 Gbps, 32-bit RoX-II™ interface that allows an engineer to scale their design by linking multiple chips (diagram 1), or design a wide variety of switches by linking to other devices (diagram 2) in the Allayer family.

Diagram 1

Diagram 2

The AL1022 Gigabit Ethernet Switch supports key features such as quality-of-service, trunking and VLAN. The device supports four classes of service that allows a networking switch to recognize and give priority to packets of data that have been marked for faster delivery. The device recognizes and prioritizes class 0 (management information), class 1 (voice and video), class 2 (data) and class 3 (back up date) which are examples of high to low priority rating.

The trunking feature in the AL1022 supports full IEEE 802.3ad. This feature enables multiple ports on a switch to be combined into a faster connection (i.e., bigger pipe) for use in high-traffic links such as to servers or between buildings. The device also supports port based and tagged VLAN (802.1q VLAN) which allows a switch to support logical as opposed to physical subgroups of end stations.

The AL3000 chip implements in hardware the complex Layer 3/4 routing algorithms that previously executed on an expensive microprocessor. The device includes a command interpreter, search engine, parser, memory server, two memory interfaces, six DMA channels, the RoX-II™ bus, and network manager.

The network manager in the AL3000 uses the RoX-II bus to collect network management information from up to 32 ports and provides Spanning Tree Support. The device provides all the MIB (Management Information Base) statistics required to support both SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and RMON (Remote Net-work Monitoring). The device also contains a separate bus that reports network management packets to an attached CPU.

According to David Wong, Director of Marketing, "Our new chipset allows an engineer to design the highest performance networking switches in the industry. However, in addition to the high performance, we also give the engineer the flexibility to design the widest variety of functions into their switch through the use of our RoX-II expansion bus. This ability to mix and match functionality allows networking companies to create the widest variety of network solutions for their customers."

Wide Variety of Applications

One application example of the new chipset is in the design of an 8-port Gigabit Layer 3/4 Switch. This type of high-performance switch is used in some sections of the Internet backbone or as the heart of an enterprise network (diagram 3). This highly complex switch, which would previously have taken several years to design, can now be put together with four AL1022 chips and a single AL3000 (diagram 1).

Diagram 3

Another application shows the flexibility of the Allayer architecture through its use in the design of a 24+2 port workgroup switch with dual uplinks (diagram 2). This popular switch is sold in high volumes because of the large number of workgroups that use it as the heart of their network. In this application, the AL1022 provides two ports of 1-Gbps uplink that can be combined into a 2 Gbps link through the use of its trunking feature. The AL1022 uses the RoX-II expansion bus to connect three AL126 Fast Ethernet switch devices (8 ports/each), and one AL300A management chip for a complete solution.

The AL1022 and AL3000 can be used to create a SONET to Ethernet switch that provides high bandwidth connection between enterprise networks and the optical network (diagram 4). With the addition of the AL126, a full featured Fast Ethernet and Layer 3/4 Gigabit Ethernet switching system with SONET interface can be designed using a standard FPGA and a SONET transceiver.

Diagram 4

Other AL1022 Features

The AL1022 also contains support for multiple MAC addresses. The device supports internal addresses that are expandable up to 32K with external memory. The chip provides 64 IP multicast group addresses for IP multicast applications. The AL1022 can perform IGMP frame trapping and forward them to a CPU that determines which ports should participate in the multicast session.

Price and Availability

The AL1022 is sampling now and will be in production in April. The chip is priced at $45 in a 456-pin BGA (Ball Grid Array) package in quantities of 1,000.

The AL3000 is sampling now and will also be in production in April. The chip is priced at $50 in a 456-pin BGA (Ball Grid Array) package in quantities of 1,000.

About Allayer

Allayer Communications designs silicon solutions that enable high bandwidth optical and enterprise switches to be smarter and faster. The corporate name -- pronounced "All-layer" -- represents Allayer's ability to provide silicon switching solutions for all layers of the OSI networking model. Allayer Communications was founded in 1997 and utilizes a combination of leading edge architecture, mixed-signal design expertise and multiple silicon process technologies to offer IC products for the Optical Switch and Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet communications markets.

Allayer is backed by over $12.5 million in venture funding from Greylock, Acer Capital America, VenGlobal Capital. Allayer's corporate headquarters is located in San Jose. Sales and consulting engineering offices are located throughout the world. For further information about Allayer and its products, please contact: Marketing Communication Department, Allayer Communications, 107 Bonaventure Drive, San Jose, CA 95134, phone: 408/570-0888, or visit the corporate Web site at: http://www.allayer.com.

RoX™ and RoX-II™ are trademarks of Allayer Communications.