SAN JOSE, Calif., February 22, 1999 -- Allayer Communications today announced the industry's first Fast Ethernet Switch chips to use the Reduced Media Independent Interface (RMII). The new standard reduces the number of pins needed to connect Fast Ethernet Switch chips to physical layer transceivers. The RMII interface greatly simplifies switch design, reduces board space and reduces overall design costs by up to 20 percent.

The AL101 is the industry's first switch chip to connect to the new RMII physical layer transceivers that use 6 pins instead of the customary 16 pins. The new interface cuts the number of transmit and receive lines in half by doubling the transfer speed between chips. The pin count is further reduced by a simpler handshake protocol. The AL116 is the first chip to support both RMII and MII interfaces in the same device.

Both devices contain all the digital circuits needed to design an 8-port, 100/10 Mbps, full-duplex Fast Ethernet switch. The AL101 includes 1,000 MAC (media access controller) addresses and the AL116 version provides for either 8,000 or 16,000 MAC addresses.

Both devices use the patent-pending RoX expansion bus that allows engineers to scale their design to 16, 24 or 32 ports and attach Gigabit ports. The devices have trunking capability that permits a switch to make multiple connections to a server or another switch.

The new chips include auto negotiation, VLAN (Virtual LAN) support and flow control that conforms to the IEEE 802.3X standard. The devices also support security such as broadcast storm control and offers port mirroring. Configuration information such as trunking parameters, flow control, fixed address is stored in an attached EEPROM.

Both devices are compatible with network management standards such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and RMON (Remote Network Monitoring). This means that these low-cost parts can be used in both low-end unmanaged switches and higher performance managed switches.

"Allayer has reshaped the industry by providing high-performance Ethernet switching devices for edge networking," states Allayer president and CEO Cheng-chung Shih. "These new devices further position Allayer as a leading provider of devices that lower the cost of high performance networking equipment."

About the RoX™ Bus

The patent-pending RoX™ expansion bus provides a 9.6 Gigabit/second bus for expanding the AL101 with additional Allayer 8-port Fast Ethernet switches or 2-port AL1000 Gigabit Ethernet switches. The RoX bus allows an engineer to scale the number of chips to match the number of ports. As more ports are needed, additional chips are attached to the RoX bus. The RoX bus is also used to relay information to the AL300 Network Management Chip.

About Trunking

The AL101 and AL116 have trunking capability that permits a switch to make multiple high-speed connections to a server or another switch. Trunking allows an Ethernet switch to achieve high performance network connections (up to 800 Mbps) to other network systems. Trunking connects up to four 200 Mbps (full duplex) Fast Ethernet ports to a server or another switch. Conventional switches can only make one 200 Mbps connection to a server. High speed 800 Mbps trunk connections greatly increase network performance without requiring expensive higher speed networking equipment.

Availability and Price

Both devices are sampling now with production in March. The AL101 is priced at $37 in a 256-pin PQFP (Plastic Quad Flat Pak) package in quantities of 1,000. The AL116 is priced at $43 in a 456-pin BGA (Ball Grid Array) in quantities of 1,000.

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Company Background

Allayer Communications designs, manufactures, markets and supports advanced semiconductor products that improve the edge network system by providing silicon solutions that make switches smarter and links between workgroups faster. 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 uses a Modular Systems Standard Product or MSSP approach to design the most flexible, high performance, and scalable ICs for Ethernet LAN switching and fiber optics applications. Allayer products are used by systems OEMs who manufacture local area networking equipment in the edge network that provides the interface between individual workstations or workgroups and the enterprise network backbone system. Leading products include the AL100, the industryıs first 8-port Fast Ethernet Switching IC with trunking and the AL1000, the first commercially available Dualport Gigabit Ethernet Switching IC.

Founded and managed by an experienced team of engineers and managers from Allied Telesyn, Rockwell, Level One, Exar, Cypress, Chipcom, LANart, Oak Technologies and Cabletron, Allayer is well positioned to lead the edge network systems market. Allayer possesses advanced engineering expertise in network system design, analog and digital ASIC design, and mixed-signal CMOS and fiber optics technologies.