SAN JOSE, Calif., August 14, 2000 -- Allayer Communications, a leading high-bandwidth network IC developer, today announced the industry's first 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching processor. The device is the first to integrate a 10-Gigabit port with twelve 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports operating at full-duplex, wire speed for an aggregated bandwidth of 44 Gbps. The 10-Gigabit port is ten times faster than existing Ethernet chips and it enables Local Area Networks (LANs) to connect directly into the Internet via OC-192 optical links.

The AL1032 is the industry's first device for the design of network switches that provide direct access via OC-192 optical connections to the Internet backbone. Previously, these switches were limited in speed by slower chips, or required expensive and time-consuming ASIC (Applica-tion Specific Integrated Circuits) development.

The patent-pending chip will boost the performance of the Internet by making it significantly easier to design switches that enable Internet Service Provides (ISPs), enterprise networks and metropolitan-area networks to connect directly to the Internet backbone via OC-192 optical links.

Other applications for the chip include terabit and multi-gigabit routers, high-port density gigabit switches, Ethernet/Packet over SONET, and front-end aggregation systems that funnel data into terabit routers.

The AL1032 sets a new record in the communications IC industry for capacity, integration, and performance by integrating its 10-Gigabit port with twelve 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports to provide full-duplex, wire speed at an aggregated bandwidth of 44 Gbps. In the event that all twelve 1-Gigabit ports simultaneously access the 10-Gigabit port, the chip's flow-control circuit automatically throttles back on the inputs to maintain a steady 10-Gigabit output.

According to Mohan Maheswaran, Vice President of Marketing, "Allayer Communications is focused on applying its patent-pending, optical interface technology to attack crucial bottlenecks in the Internet and Enterprise Network infrastructure. As an example, our chips enable the design of systems that allow corporations and enterprises to boost their Internet access speed by connecting their local area networks directly into the Internet backbone via high-speed optical (i.e., OC-192) links.

"Our technology also helps Internet Service Providers (ISPs) increase the speed at which they deliver information by allowing them to transfer data such as email, streaming multimedia and content-rich web pages directly onto the Internet backbone using high-speed optical connections. Faster data delivery via optical connections is the only way for ISPs and corporations to meet the enormous Internet bandwidth demands created by the proliferation of high-speed DSL and cable modems. We are already working with several system OEMs who are developing AL1032-based high end networking systems for delivery early next year."

The device achieves wire-speed performance on all ports at any frame length up to 9Kbytes. In addition to the 44 Gbps switching performance, the AL1032 integrates all the necessary memory elements, including MAC address table, VLAN database, and all of the frame buffer memories in a built-in 1 Mbyte SRAM. The full-feature switching engine is augmented by the L2-L7 policy and QoS (Quality of Service) engine that provides higher layer switching functions without slowing down the switching performance. The 10Gigabit port is dual mode which means it can be programmed to support either a 10-Gigabit Ethernet LAN PHY or a OC-192 WAN PHY.

Basic Operation

Data coming into the ports of the AL1032 are immediately stored in a FIFO until the port manager can perform a serial to parallel conversion and load the incoming frames into the 1-Mbyte shared internal memory. The parsing engine extracts the address and class-of-service fields and forwards them to the look-up engine. The look-up engine does a comparison to the internal 32K-entry address table that was loaded at power up and updated in real time as the chip processes data.

The address table and VLAN database determine the destination port for a given frame. The class-of-service information embedded in a frame determines what priority it has to be delivered to the target destination port. Four Classes-of-Service (CoS) are supported with a programmable and flexible queuing mechanism. As an example, voice data over any popular Voice over IP protocol could be assigned highest priority so there are no delay gaps for the end listener. Also, web traffic could be assigned to a low-latency CoS queue and optionally re-directed to the web-caching server.

When a given frame is ready for output, the port manager performs a parallel to serial conversion and moves the data to the transmit FIFO where it is clocked out of the device.

Network Management

The AL1032 collects all the MIB (Management Information Base) statistics required to support SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) management. Supported MIBs are Ethertype, Bridging, RMON, SMON, and RMON II.

CPU Interface

The AL1032 contains a 32-bit PCI bus operating in master or slave mode, that reports network management data to an attached CPU. The device can also send data traffic to the CPU thereby effectively creating a 14th port.

Class of Service

Class-of-Service priorities can be assigned based on the port number, the Layer 2 IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tag or the Layer 3 IP TOS/Diffserv fields in the frame. The L2-L7 policy switching engine optionally overrides the CoS of a frame based on any arbitrary field values. In addition, the L2-L7 policy engine supports modification of any Layer 2 and/or Layer 3 QoS fields in the frame to support the consistent network wide QoS policy, even when end-hosts do not support the modern QoS field usage.

Trunking

The trunking feature in the AL1032 supports full IEEE 802.3ad specifications, including 802.3ad MAC control frame responses in hardware. This feature enables multiple 1-Gigabit local ports (up to twelve) to be combined in a group to form a faster single logical connection (i.e., bigger pipe) for use in high-traffic links such as to servers or between buildings. The device supports up to six trunks, each with a maximum of 12 local ports and up to 16 remote ports that may reside on other AL1032 ICs in a system. As an example, four of the 1-Gigabit ports could be combined to form a 4-Gigabit link to a server, and these ports could span four different AL1032 ICs for system redundancy applications.

VLAN

The AL1032 supports IEEE 802.1Q VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) which allows groups of users to be programmed to exclude multicast traffic from other ports. For example, users 1, 2 and 3 could be grouped as a VLAN that would exclude traffic from users 4 through 12. This grouping makes a network more efficient because it does not have the overhead and security concerns of "listening" to traffic intended for other users.

A userıs MAC address membership to each VLAN is specific, and therefore, a user may be connected to a different port through a unique VLAN. This supports the modern meshed Enterprise and WAN topology. The AL1032 additionally supports IEEE 802.1S spanning tree for each VLAN, and IEEE 802.1V VLAN classification by protocol and port.

Network Security

The AL1032 supports several key features that system administrators can use to control access to the network. Both port-based and tag-based VLANs control access membership. Through the port-security features, each portıs address database can be pre-programmed or "frozen", so that only those addresses that are on this allowed list could access the network. The Port-security engine optionally can disable the port upon detection of any intruders. For those systems that employ authentication servers, the AL1032 optionally forwards the unknown end-stations traffic to the CPU or to a unique authentication VLAN and tags the frame accordingly, so that the authentication server, via SNMP management, could authorize or deny access to any new users.

Price and Availability

The AL1032 is sampling now and will be in production in November. The chip is priced at $250 in a 785-pin TBGA (Thermal Ball Grid Array) package in quantities of 10,000.

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 $25 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, CA 95134, phone: 408/570-0888, or visit the corporate website at: http://www.allayer.com.

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