Advanced Switching to Exceed Port Shipments of 5.5 Million by 2008.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2004

Recent Reports from the Linley Group, Crystal Cube Consulting and

Metz International Predict Rapid and Steady Adoption of Advanced

Switching Standard

Recent reports released by The Linley Group, Metz International and Crystal Cube Consulting indicate a promising future for the growth and adoption of the Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) standard. The Crystal Cube and Metz report, titled, "Bus Wars The Sequel: Life in the Fast Lane," indicates that ASI is projected to experience significant growth in ports and revenue through 2008, and offers a robust ecosystem that will reduce costs and development risks and accelerate time to market for adopters. The Linley Group report, "A Guide to Switch Fabrics, Third Edition," predicts a major shift to support ASI over the next few years.

ASI is a technology, based on PCI Express, which enables the standardization of proprietary backplane architectures. Because it uses the same physical-link and data-link layers as the PCI Express standard, it's able to exploit a vast ecosystem of products currently available to the market. Industry analysts credit the innovativeness of the standard as well as the long-standing viability and marketplace acceptance of PCI Express to the anticipated growth of ASI.

"Advanced Switching is expected to see substantial growth beginning in the 2nd half of 2005," said Ernie Bergstrom, principal analyst for Crystal Cube Consulting. "Because of its ability to seamlessly enable interoperability between proprietary systems and ease the increasing complexities facing design engineers, ASI is sure to be a winner across a number of industries such as storage, communications and computing. By year-end 2008, we anticipate ASI to generate revenues of nearly one billion dollars, while port projections are expected to reach approximately 5.5 million ports."

The "Bus Wars Update" report focuses on the influences that the switch fabric design will have on the high-speed, peer-to-peer market and how bus architecture standards will fare in that environment. It includes:

-- An analysis of features required for switched interconnects

for the communications market;

-- A common set of more than 50 questions, which were posed to 11

leading silicon companies, including the leading switch fabric

vendors. Their answers are included without editing;

-- A clear view of the technical differences between the

standards interconnects;

-- A comparison of salient features related to communications;

-- A technical, economic and business overview of the standards;

-- An overview of the value chain as seen by systems designers

and end users;

-- An update on the five year revenue forecast through 2008.

The Linley Group report takes a closer look at the industry's leading switch fabric vendors and covers switch fabric requirements, features, architectures, standards and trends. Senior Analyst Jag Bolaria said, "We expect the market will ultimately shift to merchant fabrics using standard protocols and backplanes. Advanced Switching is a comprehensive fabric specification that has broad industry support. We expect first ASI fabrics to sample in 2005."

"ASI is one of the fundamental building blocks of the future when it comes to switched interconnectivity," said Rajeev Kumar, president of the Advanced Switching Interconnect Special Interest Group (ASI SIG). "These two reports clearly indicate that the marketplace recognizes this, as well as the long-term benefits ASI will deliver to every ecosystem."

To view more information on the Crystal Cube Consulting and Metz International report visit: www.crystalcubeconsulting.com. To view more information on the Linley Group report visit: http://www.linleygroup.com/Reports/fabric_guide.html.

About the ASI SIG

The Advanced Switching Interconnect SIG is a non-profit collaborative trade organization chartered with providing a switched fabric interconnect standard (see Mission above). This fabric technology has been developed by the Arapahoe Working Group -- an industry group collaborating to develop and support a switched interconnect and data fabric interface specification for communications equipment, termed Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) based on the PCI Express architecture. The technology and intellectually property developed by the AWG was transferred to the ASI SIG in late 2003. The ASI SIG, consisting of a board of directors as well as members, defines, develops and markets ASI. Different membership levels provide differing levels of influence, involvement and responsibility. The overall tasks performed by the members of the SIG include technical and enabling support as well as enabling the industry to adopt the ASI specification. The board of directors includes Agere, Alcatel, Huawei, Intel, Siemens, Vitesse and Xilinx.