SAN JOSE, Calif., June 5, 2000 -- High-bandwidth network IC developer Allayer Communications announced today the first standard IC product solution for the design of Gigabit Ethernet LAN to OC-48 optical network interfaces. Previous to this device, developers had to develop a custom ASIC, a process that is costly and time-consuming.

The new chip, the ALPOS48 Packet Over SONET switch for OC-48 applications, slashes the time and cost to produce 2.5 Gbps interfaces between local area networks and the high-speed optical network backbone. A complete Packet Over SONET interface can be developed using the ALPOS48 control and interface IC and the AL1022 dual-port, Gigabit Ethernet switch IC. Using the high-speed (12.8 Gbps peak) RoX-II™ bus interface the two devices aggregate multiple 1.25 Gigabit/second Ethernet data channels or multiple 10/100 Mbit/second Ethernet data channels into OC-3 to OC-48 SONET data channels. This gives the system designer a high-speed Packet Over SONET switch capability that can be easily integrated into a chassis-based network interface system. These network systems are used to connect Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet-based workgroup and campus LANs to high-speed optical networks.

Diagram 1

The ALPOS48 device accepts input from an OC-48 SONET framer and translates the high-speed data stream into Ethernet data packets (diagram 1). Conversely it takes the Ethernet data packets and translates them into a SONET-ready data stream for hand off to a SONET framer device. In addition to OC48, the ALPOS48 can also support redundant or single OC12 and OC3 links. Until now, this functionality required system developers to design a custom ASIC solution. This approach is costly, takes months to design and debug and can be difficult to modify or improve. The ALPOS48/AL1022 approach provides a plug-and-play solution, is expandable using the RoX-II bus interface and is available immediately.

The companion AL1022 Gigabit Ethernet Switch supports important network features such as quality-of-service and trunking. 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 trunking feature is fully IEEE 802.3ad standard compatible and enables two Gigabit channels to be combined into a single 2.5 Gigabit channel. A typical Ethernet Over SONET or Packet Over SONET system design will use this trunking feature to support the 2.5 Gigabit/second OC-48 data stream.

Because both devices are RoX-II™ bus compatible, such systems can be extended with additional RoX-II-based network devices such as network management circuits. For example, the AL300 Management engine collects network management information from up to 32 ports and provides Spanning Tree Support. It provides all the MIB (Man-agement 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.

"This new device solves a key issue facing network systems designers who need to connect LANs and WANs," said Mohan Maheswaran, vice president of marketing at Allayer. "The industry trend is to provide the fastest possible interface between local area networks to the optical network backbone. This means connecting at the OC-48 2.5 Gigabit/sec. data rate. The ALPOS48 is the only off-the-shelf solution for this function. It leverages our high-speed RoX-II architecture to provide a low-cost, plug-and-play solution."

Price and Availability

The ALPOS48 is sampling now and will be in production in July. The chip is priced at $300 in a 352-pin BGA (Ball Grid Array) package in quantities of 1,000. The AL1022 is in production now. The chip is priced at $45 in a 456-pin BGA (Ball Grid Array) package in quantities of 1,000.

About Allayer

Allayer Communications is a leading producer of high bandwidth network ICs for the enterprise and optical network. The company develops scalable network architectures and mixed-signal switching and routing ICs for the Gigabit/Fast Ethernet and optical network markets. The corporate name -- pronounced "All-layer" -- represents the companyıs long-range intention to provide silicon solutions for all levels of the OSI networking model.

Founded in 1997, Allayer has received over $12.5 million in venture funding from Greylock, Acer Capital America, VenGlobal Capital. Allayer's corporate headquarters is in San Jose, California with worldwide consulting sales and engineering offices.

For more information please contact: Marketing Communication Department, Allayer Communications, 107 Bonaventura Drive, San Jose, CA95134, phone: 408/570-0888, or visit the corporate website at: http://www.allayer.com.

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