Advanced Switching Community Celebrates Milestone with Release of Multiple New Products; Six ASI SIG Member Companies Reveal Details About New ASI-Compliant Solutions, Including First ASI Silicon.

CHICAGO -- The Advanced Switching Interconnect Special Interest Group (ASI SIG) today released a host of ASI-related product and technology announcements from its member companies, marking a significant transition from specification development to implementation phase of the technology, across the industry. The announcements, which most notably included the first ASI silicon switch (demonstration offered at Stargen booth #87031), showcased the strong momentum and foothold that ASI currently has in offering the industry a migration path from custom ASIC and merchant proprietary fabrics, to standard-based fabrics built upon PCI Express. Further, ASI will be a key enabler for many modular-based platforms for compute, storage and communications market segments. Members making ASI-related announcements today include: Agilent Technologies, Denali Software, Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT), Intel, Stargen and Xyratex.

ASI SIG members demonstrated their ongoing collaboration and commitment to the standard by hosting an exclusive "First Looks" press conference last night at Chicago's Wrigley Field, where executives from each member company presented individual announcements and product details. All announcements were officially made today.

Today's ASI news included the following:

--Agilent promoted the industry-first AdvancedTCA(R) probing solution to support the Protocol Analyzer and Exerciser for ASI to expand flexibility of testing new high-speed data planes. (For more information see: http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom)

--Denali announced a cooperative effort with GDA Technologies, to provide a comprehensive IP platform for ASI design. Elements of the platform include Denali PureSpec verification IP product for ASI and GDA's ASI IP core product. (For more detailed information see: http://denali.com/news.html.)

--IDT revealed an FPGA-based prototype technology that will demonstrate the inter-working of the common switch interface (CSIX) data path protocol into ASI, using the Generic Data Transport protocol interface, or PI-2, specified by the ASI SIG. This prototype technology will enable customers to develop early prototype systems based on ASI with a seamless migration to production platforms. Applications targeted are up to 10 Gbits per second line card subsystems in full carrier-class communications platforms such as multi-service access routers and broadband remote access servers. (For more detailed information see: www.idt.com).

--Intel disclosed technical details on an AdvancedTCA(R)-based development platform designed to spur industry development of solutions combining the advantages of ASI and Intel processors. (For more detailed information see: http://www.intel.com/netcomms/as/index.htm).

--Stargen revealed the details on its Merlin switch, the first component of its AXSys ASI product line. The Merlin switch is a ten port (x4) ASI switch with support for configurable port widths. The switch has an 80Gb/s full duplex non-blocking switching capacity, which can scale to 400Gb/s by cascading multiple switches together. The Merlin switch incorporates PI-8 leaf bridging which allows each port to connect to PCI Express peripherals without any external bridging and also includes advanced quality of service and flow control mechanisms. Stargen will offer an interoperability demo of its ASI silicon at booth #87031) and product sampling begins in July. (For more detailed information see: http://www.stargen.com/products/axsys.shtml).

--Xyratex announced its first ASI products to service the needs of their OEM customer base within the communications and data centre sectors. Available during the 3rd quarter of 2005, the products will include: the first switch silicon for a scalable cross-bar ASI switch, capable of scaling from 40Gb/s to 640Gb/s; 80G ATCA switch fabric and product developer's kit for early technology adopters and a system-level shared I/O product for the interconnection of servers, storage and networks. (For more detailed information see: www.xyratex.com).

"The sustained efforts of our members and the unified commitment of the ASI SIG's technical, marketing and governance work groups have been instrumental to enabling a final spec to silicon availability timeline of only 18 months," said ASI SIG President and Intel's Advanced Switching Initiatives Manager, Rajeev Kumar. "The chain of compelling news announcements today coupled with prior announcements from FPGA, IP and tool vendors, demonstrates a significant transition into a new phase for the technology of industry implementation and adoption."

ASI technology, based on PCI Express, enables the standardization of proprietary backplane architectures. Common physical-link and data-link layers with the PCI Express standard enable the ASI technology to exploit a vast ecosystem of products currently available in the market. ASI defines a new transaction and upper layer protocol designed from the ground up, to meet the requirements of carrier-grade applications. Key capabilities include peer-to-peer transfers, protocol-agnostic encapsulation and multiple mechanisms for flow control, congestion management, failover and quality of service. Industry analysts credit the innovative nature of the standard, as well as the ubiquity of PCI Express technology, to the rapid growth and adoption of ASI.

In fact, a recent report by industry research firm Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) states, "...our sources suggest that there will be more take up as 3G cellular finally begins to ramp up and as IP-based DSL takes off ... nonetheless, we expect that the major driver for ASI is ultimately going to be the spread of PCI Express itself."

This week, the ASI SIG will participate in In-Stat's AdvancedTCA Forum at McCormick Place on Wednesday, June 8, during SUPERCOMM. Stargen's Vice President of Marketing Wade Appelman will speak about "The Battle for the Backplane Bulges" at 5:10 p.m.

Those who are not in attendance at SUPERCOMM, but interested in learning more about recent advancements of Advanced Switching and the host of news announcements, can participate in a June 15 TechOnLine Seminar entitled: "Advanced Switching Industry Update. What's New and What's Next." Rajeev Kumar, president of the ASI SIG, will moderate this seminar with Stargen, Xyratex and Agilent also presenting. For more information and registration, visit http://www.techonline.com/community/home/37973.

About ASI SIG

The Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI SIG) is a non-profit collaborative trade organization tasked with developing and supporting a switched interconnect and data fabric interface specification for communications, storage and embedded equipment, termed Advanced Switching interconnect (ASI), based on the PCI Express* architecture. The ASI SIG's board of directors and members, comprised of industry leading equipment manufacturers and semiconductor and tools vendors, has surpassed 60 members to date. In addition to ongoing technical development of the specification, these member companies help to define, develop and market ASI. Different membership levels provide differing levels of influence, involvement and responsibility. The overall tasks performed by the members of the SIG include establishing broad industry awareness, ongoing technical development and enabling rapid industry adoption through training programs, ecosystem development and interoperability and compliance testing. The board of directors includes Huawei, Intel, IDT, Siemens, Vitesse and Xilinx. More information can be found at www.asi-sig.org.