I-Cube Announces New 48 Port Switch Fabric With Built in Multi Gigabit Uplink Support.CAMPBELL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April, 20 1998-- LS211 Designed to Enable High Port Count, Low Cost 10/100 Switches With Up to 2 Gigabit Uplinks I-Cube, Inc., the leading provider of high-performance switching solutions, today announced a new switching fabric product designed for the Gigabit Ethernet An Ethernet standard that transmits at 1 Gbps. Used mostly to connect high-end workstations and servers as well as for network backbones, Gigabit Ethernet transmits full duplex from point to point using switches and half duplex in a shared environment (CSMA/CD) using a hub. enabled 10/100 workgroup switch A network switch designed for LAN traffic within an enterprise. Contrast with carrier-class switch. market. The LS211 enables a range of switches to be built with various combinations of Fast Ethernet An earlier name for 100Mbps Ethernet. See 100Base-T. (networking) Fast Ethernet - A version of Ethernet developed in the 1990s(?) which can carry 100 Mbps compared with standard Ethernet's 10 Mbps. It requires upgraded network cards and hubs. ports and Gigabit Uplinks such as the 24/2 switch with 24 ports of Fast Ethernet and 2 Gigabit Uplinks. "This is the first Fast Ethernet switching fabric designed to support up to 28 ports of Fast Ethernet plus 2 Gigabit Uplinks," stated I-Cube's CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , George Kern George Kern, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, was a leading New York corporate lawyer in the 1970's and 80's. After graduating from Princeton (1947) and Yale Law School (1952), Kern joined Sullivan & Cromwell where he became a partner in 1960. . "Previous attempts at creating Fast Ethernet switching fabrics by other vendors have failed to provide enough bandwidth for the Gig Uplink (1) Transmitting from an earth station to a satellite. Contrast with downlink. (2) A port on a network device that is used to connect to another network device rather than a client or server. See MDI port. . I-Cube's solution provides a full Gigabit of bandwidth for each Gig link." I-Cube Enables Gigabit Upgradable Workgroup Switches Today The LS211 is a true full-duplex, 4.8 Gigabit switching fabric, implementing 48 full-duplex Fast Ethernet ports. Each port has a fixed, dedicated 100Mbit of full-duplex bandwidth. The LS211 incorporates three features designed expressly to support Gigabit Uplinks. "Logical port ID's allow the LS211 to separate the concepts of physical and logical port identification," stated I-Cube's Vice President of Marketing Syed Ali. "Port Aggregation Using multiple transmission paths between network devices in order to increase transmission speed. Port aggregation between a server and a switch requires multiple network adapters (NICs) in the server or adapters with multiple ports. allows multiple physical ports to make up a single logical port. Additionally, dynamic load balancing The fine tuning of a computer system, network or disk subsystem in order to more evenly distribute the data and/or processing across available resources. For example, in clustering, load balancing might distribute the incoming transactions evenly to all servers, or it might redirect them allows traffic to be automatically distributed across the multiple physical ports making up the single logical port to maximize throughput." By logically combining multiple ports and aggregating traffic across them, the LS211 is able to provide interfaces capable of supporting Gigabit Ethernet. The LS211 can be used as the switching fabric for 16 port to 28 port Fast Ethernet switches with 2 Gigabit Uplinks or 32 port to 38 port Fast Ethernet switches with 1 Gigabit Uplink. A second switching product, the LS201 which implements 26 full-duplex, Fast Ethernet ports, can be used as the switching fabric for building 16 port switches with 1 Gigabit Uplink. "Customers want to invest in an architecture that will support future network requirements. This means investing in a technology that is GbE upgradable. 100Mbit workgroup switches that provide uplinks to tie into emerging Gigabit backbones and servers are rapidly becoming a hot commodity," said Esmeralda Silva sil·va also syl·va n. pl. sil·vas or sil·vae 1. The trees or forests of a region. 2. A written work on the trees or forests of a region. , research manager, LANs at International Data Corporation. "The high cost associated with uplink transceivers has prevented many customers from making purchases until Gigabit backbones and servers are fully deployed. A 'Gigabit upgradable' workgroup technology, like I-Cube's LS211, is attractive because it helps system administrators to avoid paying a heavy upfront cost and allows them to invest in equipment today that will support their Gigabit networks tomorrow." The LS211 is ready to support two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces today. All necessary signals can be brought up to two modular upgrade connectors. Future I-Cube devices will be able to use these interfaces to implement full Gigabit Ethernet ports. Using the LS211, system vendors can ship 16, 24 and 32 port Fast Ethernet switches with Gigabit Uplink upgradability today. The LS211 Enables Full-Duplex Wire Speed, High Port Count Switches The LS211 can also be used to construct 32, 40, and 48 port Fast Ethernet switches. Traditionally Fast Ethernet switches have been limited to 24 ports or less because of bandwidth limitations. The LS211 switching fabric has enough bandwidth to deliver full duplex (Computers) arranged so that the information may be transmitted in both directions simultaneously; - of communications channels between computers; contrasted with No other Fast Ethernet switching fabric can deliver this level of performance. For the first time, Fast Ethernet system vendors can offer Fast Ethernet switching products at these high port counts. I-Cube's LS SwitchSet utilizes proprietary crossbar technology, unlike other Fast Ethernet silicon vendors which utilize shared bus and shared memory architectures In computer architecture, Shared Memory Architecture (SMA) refers to a design where the graphics chip does not have its own dedicated memory, and instead shares the main system RAM with the CPU and other components. . No matter how many ports are implemented, I-Cube's crossbar architecture provides perfect, fixed, non-blocking bandwidth for every port. The LS family is composed of the LS081 8 port crossbar switching An earlier telephone switch. First used in the late 1930s, it was a mechanical device that used magnets and metal bars (crossbars) to close connections. Crossbar switches have been replaced with electronic switches (large-scale, specialized computer systems). See ESS and DMS. fabric, the LS101 24 port crossbar switching fabric, the LS201 26 port crossbar switching fabric, the LS211 48 port crossbar switching fabric, the LS100 Quad port Fast Ethernet controller, and the LS105 Secondary Address Translation Cache. Product Pricing and Availability The LS SwitchSet is available now, while general sampling of the LS211 and the LS201 will commence in Q3 of this year. Fully managed or unmanaged, high performance 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 40, and 48 port switches can be constructed from the LS SwitchSet today. Pricing in quantities of 1,000 units for the LS201 is $38.28 and for the LS211 is $68.89. The Raptor reference design is a 16 port, Full Duplex, Fast Ethernet per port switch available now and costs $5000. About I-Cube I-Cube, Inc., headquartered in Campbell, Calif., is the world's leading provider of high-performance switching solutions for bandwidth-hungry applications in networking, telecom, computation, and digital video/image processing. I-Cube's LS Fast Ethernet SwitchSet, along with its full turnkey Raptor reference design platform, enable OEMs to bring a range of 8 port to 48 port, managed and unmanaged, 10/100Mbit switches to market quickly with the highest performance at the lowest cost per port. I-Cube supplies product to IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , Cisco Systems “Cisco” redirects here. For other uses, see Cisco (disambiguation). Cisco System,Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO, HKSE: 4333 ) is an American multinational corporation with 54,000 employees and annual revenue of US $28.48 billion as of 2006. , Hewlett Packard, Alcatel, Delta Products and Hitachi Cable Hitachi Cable, Ltd. (日立電線株式会社 among many others. Investors in I-Cube include Altera Corporation, Draper Fisher Associates, Berkeley International Capital and St. Paul St. Paul as a missionary he fearlessly confronts the “perils of waters, of robbers, in the city, in the wilderness.” [N.T.: II Cor. 11:26] See : Bravery Venture Capital. For more information contact I-Cube at 408/341-1888, via email at marketing@icube.com or visit I-Cube's web site at http://www.icube.com. -0- Note to Editors: SwitchSet is the trademark of I-Cube, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders. I-Cube, Inc., does not assume any liability arising out of the applications for use of the product described herein; nor does it convey any license under its patents, copyright rights or any rights of others. CONTACT: I-Cube Syed Ali, 408/341-1888 ext. 113 syed.ali@icube.com or Rourke.MS&L (Media contact) Leah Westre, 408/453-9194 ext. 37 lwestre@rourkemsl.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion