PCI Bus -- Found in Almost Every Computer -- Gets a 32x Boost in Performance From a Single Chip.

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 1997--

- Enables data exchange at Supercomputer speed

- Huge potential to accelerate Internet access 

- Permits circuit board swap with power on

A startup company, Sebring Systems, has announced a new, low-cost chip which allows computers to transfer data 32 times faster.

The same chip adds critical missing functions such as fault tolerance, hot insertion ("hot plug") and unlimited peer to peer communications.

The new Sebring Ring Connection chip delivers a quantum performance jump in the input-output subsystem, the first such improvement since the introduction of the PCI bus several years ago.

The computer industry has depended on incremental advances in microprocessors and memory systems. Now, a huge but affordable performance boost in I/O capability enables design freedom to build much faster, less expensive systems.

The Sebring Ring Connection chip will initially accelerate computers designed to implement high performance applications like Internet access and intra-company networks. Called servers, these computers are most in need of the unprecedented performance afforded by the chip, which transfers data at 4250 Megabytes (4.25 Gigabytes) per second (compared with 133 Megabytes per second for standard PCI).

Orders are being taken for delivery early next year. In quantity, the chip sells for $59.

CopperCom Inc., Cupertino, Calif., an early customer, is developing digital subscriber line (ADSL) servers to provide integrated voice, data and video capability for the SOHO and small business market. The much higher telephone line connectivity speed of DSL (about 50 times faster than dial-up modems) requires a server with highly accelerated data transfer, exactly the job of the Sebring Ring Connection. Furthermore, CopperCom values the chip's hot swap and fault tolerant features as indispensable for their remote access concentrators.

Another co-marketing alliance, XaQti (Shak-tee) Corp., San Jose, Calif., is developing Gigabit Ethernet solutions to connect servers to the Internet and intranets.

"The full streaming interface of Gigabit Ethernet can easily saturate the available bandwidth of the PCI bus," said Stephen Lau, co-founder and vice president of Marketing at Sebring Systems. "With the Sebring Ring Connection, the bandwidth of PCI is accelerated to eliminate all data transfer bottlenecks."

In addition to an incredible bandwidth boost, the Sebring Ring provides dramatic architectural expansion -- up to 256 PCI buses in a single system, making systems with as many as 1,024 PCI slots practical. Current systems are limited to a mere 4 to 8 slots.

"This chip is likely to enable interesting innovations," said Jim Turley, senior analyst and senior editor of the Microprocessor Report for MicroDesign Resources (MDR), Sunnyvale. "The industry can benefit from the scalability of PCI provided by the Sebring Ring Connection. With scaling and ordinary silicon shrinks, the chip family road map should keep the PCI bus competitive well into the era of Gigahertz processors and switched Gigahertz networks directly to the desktop."

The PCI bus is employed in nearly all computers. More than a billion PCI slots are now operating in the field. The circuit boards which employ these slots deliver the image on the computer's display, manage the transfer of data between the computer's disk drives, connect the computer to the office network, run the scanner and multimedia audio and video subsystems and dozens of other important data transfer functions.

In server computers, the PCI slots implement huge data warehouses on "redundant arrays of inexpensive drives" (RAID) and provide the host end of corporate local area networks (LANs) and global wide area networks (WANs). Computers which serve the Internet fall into this category.

Consumer demand for data continues to swell beyond the ability of servers to satisfy it, due primarily to the impact of multimedia (video, audio and graphics) which fuels the demand.

"The popularity of the Internet is also the reason it's slowing down -- like a freeway at rush hour," said Jack Regula, inventor and CEO of Sebring Systems. "The Sebring Ring Connection will do more to speed up computer systems than any new microprocessor or memory system."

Normally, computer performance improves in small increments, typically 25%, doubling an average of every 18 months. With the Sebring Ring Connection, the net performance improvement for data transfers in practical systems approaches 2500% in a single step.

"The ability to handle multiple concurrent data streams in a PCI environment should stimulate the development of truly novel applications," said Will Strauss, president at Forward Concepts, Tempe, Ariz., the leading market research organization for digital signal processing (DSP) technology. "Aggregating prodigious amounts of multimedia information is one of the toughest data handling jobs. Sebring Systems' approach should prove very attractive."

About Sebring Systems

Dramatically improving the scalability, reliability and availability of systems based on PCI is the mission of Sebring Systems. The company's Sebring Ring architecture takes "PCI to the Nth" by supporting up to 1024 slots at an aggregate transfer rate of 4.25 Gigabytes/second with hardware based fault tolerance and hot swap.

Founded in 1996, Sebring Systems employs a fabless semiconductor business model in combination with key strategic customer and vendor alliances. Privately funded, the company is located at 16400 Lark Avenue, Suite 240, Los Gatos, Calif., 95032. An informative and up-to-date Web site is maintained at www.sebringring.com . -0-

Note to Editors: Sebring Ring Connection(TM) is a trademark of Sebring Systems Inc.

FAQs and other dynamic documents have been placed on-line at a fast-growing Web site, http://www.sebringring.com .

CONTACT: Sebring Systems

Stephen Lau, 408/358-7827

[e-mail]

or

Shohat & Kahn

Murry Shohat, 707/576-0111

[e-mail]