Network Processing Forum (NPF) Announces 2005 Election Results.

FREMONT, Calif. -- The Network Processing Forum (NPF), a non-profit industry association fostering the growth of network processing technologies, today announced the results of their annual election. Harmeet Bhugra, Sr. Systems Architect, CTO Office at IDT Inc., and Brian Holden, Principal Engineer at PMC-Sierra, Inc., were re-elected to the NPF Board of Directors. The Board elected officers including Chuck Sannipoli as Chair and Harmeet Bhugra as Vice-Chair.

Jim Hamstra - Systems Architect in the Corporate Technology Group at Flextronics was re-elected Chair of the Benchmarking Working Group. Michael Lerer - Industry Consultant representing Xilinx was re-elected Chair of the Hardware Working Group, and Alex Conta - Technical Director at Transwitch Corporation was appointed by the Board to fill the Software Working Group Chair position.

Chuck Sannipoli is the new Chair of the Board of Directors. "I am honored to be named Chairman of the NP Forum Board of Directors and am committed to continuing its mission to promote the growth and effective use of network processing technologies to address frame, cell, packet and complex content processing applications."

In total, the NPF has five board members and three working group chairs. The complete NPF Board and Working Group Chairs include:

Board Members

--Chuck Sannipoli, Chairman of the Board, IP Infusion

--Harmeet Bhugra, Vice-Chairman of the Board, IDT

--Ellen Deleganes, Board Member, Intel

--Brian Holden, Board Member, PMC-Sierra

--Michael Persson, Board Member, Ericsson

Working Group Chairs

--Alex Conta, Software Working Group Chair, Transwitch

--Jim Hamstra, Benchmarking Working Group Chair, Flextronics

--Michael Lerer, Hardware Working Group Chair, Consultant to Xilinx

About the Elected Board Members and Working Group Chairs

Harmeet Bhugra is a Senior Systems Architect in the CTO Office at Integrated Device Technology Inc. in San Jose, CA. He also serves on the Board of Directors at the Network Processing Forum. At IDT he has led projects on industry standard TCAMs, wireless infrastructure products and developing High Speed Serial interfaces. Prior to joining IDT, Harmeet held ASIC/ASSP Design positions at Nortel Networks in Ottawa, O.N. and PMC-Sierra Inc. in Burnaby, B.C.

Mr. Bhugra has contributed to standards efforts in the NPF, the OIF, the IEEE 802.3, the PCI-SIG and the QDR Consortium. He graduated with a BEng from University of Victoria, B.C. Canada with graduate coursework in MBA and MSE at California State University, CA, USA.

Brian Holden is a Principal Engineer in PMC-Sierra's Microprocessor Products Division. He is also the VP & Technical Chair of the HyperTransport Consortium and serves on the Board of Directors of the NPF.

Prior to joining PMC-Sierra, Mr. Holden was the CEO and co-founder of Network Synthesis, Inc., which was acquired by IgT where he was CTO. IgT was acquired by PMC-Sierra in 1998. Mr. Holden was also a co-founder and manager of StrataCom, Inc. where he co-architected and co-designed the IPX, the first commercial cell switch.

Mr. Holden has contributed to standards efforts in the HyperTransport Consortium, the PCI-SIG, the NPF, the OIF, the ATM Forum, and IEEE 802.17. Mr. Holden holds 17 U.S. patents including StrataCom's original ATM patents.

He graduated with a BSEE from U.C. Davis in 1981 with highest honors. In 1993, he received a MBA from Cornell University with graduate coursework in computer science.

Alex Conta is Technical Director, Standards and Architecture, with Transwitch Corporation. He has over 30 years of experience in Computer Systems, and Data Networking Systems development and architecture with Digital Equipment Corporation, Cascade Communications, Lucent Technologies, 3Com Corporation, and Transwitch Corporation. In the last 20 years, Alex contributed to Data Communications Protocol Architecture and Standards development in IETF, IEEE, and ITU-T. In NPF, Alex chaired the Packet Handler, and the Interfaces Management Task Groups of the NPF Software Working Group, as well as the Software Working Group during 2004-2005.

Jim Hamstra is a Systems Architect in the Corporate Technology Group of Flextronics International. He has over 30 years' experience in hardware and software architecture and design. Jim has made major contributions to NPF and OIF Implementation Agreements and to ANSI and IEEE standards, including Streaming Interface and Messaging (NPF), FDDI (ANSI), Fast Ethernet (IEEE), SPI-4, SPI-5 and SxI-5 (OIF), and CEI Electrical and Protocol (OIF).

Mike Lerer is an independent consultant, active in standards development and systems architecture. He is a recognized industry leader in the development of standards for high speed communication interfaces. He is Chairperson of the Optical Internetworking Forum Physical Link Layer Working Group (OIF PLL), is a past Chair of the Network Processing Forum Software Working Group, and is active in IEEE 802.3ap, RapidIO, and PICMG. Previously Mike held the position of Technology Facilitator in the architecture group of Avici Systems. He was a founder of and executive with two start-up companies Pixelworks Inc, and Small System Design Inc. Mike holds degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering Computer Science, and Management.

About the Network Processing Forum

Founded in 2001, the Network Processing Forum (NPF) is an international industry consortium of networking semiconductor, software and OEM manufacturers accelerating the adoption of network processing technologies through the development and implementation of network processing standards and benchmarks. By establishing standard interfaces and benchmarks, the NPF helps semiconductor manufacturers, software developers, services companies and system OEMs lower development costs, shorten design cycles, reduce product time-to-market and increase product time-in-market. The Forum includes members from around the world that provide network processing products and services globally. For more information, visit the NPF website at www.npforum.org.

The Network Processing Forum (NPF) name and logo are trademarks of the Network Processing Forum. Other names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.