PCI Serial HIPPI NIC Now Available From Essential Communications; HIPPI Speeds Arrive on the Desktop.

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 4, 1995--Essential Communications today announced the immediate availability of a PCI Serial HIPPI Network Interface Card (NIC), an adapter that brings gigabit-speed networking to the desktop.

It will allow personal computers, workstations and servers equipped with PCI to operate as part of very high-speed TCP/IP networks. Essential is demonstrating the PCI Serial HIPPI NIC in a Digital AlphaServer(TM) 400 4/233 during Supercomputing `95 (Booth 900) at the San Diego Convention Center. The Network Interface Card is shipping immediately.

"The PCI Serial HIPPI NIC for the first time brings HIPPI, the fastest TCP/IP networking available, to a broad range of desktop and peripheral devices," said Michael McGowen, Essential's Chairman and Chief Technical Officer. "Production installations worldwide of HIPPI (High Performance Parallel Interface) have reported throughput up to 90 megabytes per second."

"All-fiber, or Serial HIPPI is increasingly viewed as the interface of choice for the highest level clustering, client/server and backbone networking," McGowen said. "Our new adapter extends HIPPI speeds to a broader range of devices (in 1996, this will include nearly all vendors of servers and workstations) -- providing customers access to gigabit networking speeds for these applications."

Priced at less than $2,000 each when purchased in volume, the PCI Serial HIPPI NIC is offered on a half-size PCI board. "The NIC represents a remarkable achievement in size and cost reduction for a gigabit connection," McGowen said. "A new single-chip HIPPI-to-PCI ASIC, developed by Essential, and shown in operation for the first time at Supercomputing `95, is the key to these breakthroughs."

Called the RoadRunnerPCI, this custom ASIC is constructed of three CMOS cores -- the physical- and media-level functions for Serial HIPPI, a 32-bit RISC processor with on-board memory and a PCI bus interface. The processor manages all HIPPI functions, making them transparent to the host and freeing drivers to simply send and accept packets. The RoadRunnerPCI also performs endian conversion, TCP/IP checksum generation and validation. Its software architecture minimizes interrupts and latencies by supporting a ring-buffer, event-driven DMA master host. It also allows the on-board RISC processor to share these HIPPI network tasks with the host processor. Essential offers TCP/IP, HIPPI Network Forum API and IPI-3 drivers.

"With the introduction of the RoadRunnerPCI architecture, Essential is laying the foundation for a family of single slot network interface cards for native PCI, PCI Mezzanine (PMC), Silicon Graphics' GIO-64, Sun Microsystems' SBus and IBM's RS/6000 Micro Channel, and additional proprietary high-speed busses," said Essential President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Boas.

Albuquerque-based Essential Communications, founded in 1992, is a leading provider of end-to-end solutions for the high-bandwidth communications markets.

For more information, contact Essential at 505-344-0080, or via the World Wide Web at www.esscom.com.

CONTACT: Essential Communications

Lisa Freitas, 505/344-0080, ext. 306

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