PMC-SIERRA SHIPS CLASSIPI PACKET CLASSIFICATION PROCESSOR.

PMC-Sierra (Nasdaq:PMCS) is shipping production silicon for its PM2329 ClassiPI(TM) (Classification by Packet Inspection) packet content classification processor.

More than a dozen network equipment companies have selected the processor to accelerate the deployment of classification-intensive applications in OC-48 and Gigabit Ethernet routers, switches and specialised Internet Protocol (IP) service products, since the release of engineering samples in February 2001.

The ClassiPI processor has received industry acclaim for its Layer 2 through 7 packet classification performance. Customers, including Cisco Systems, Inc. and Terayon Communication Systems, have reported a substantial improvement in performance for content aware applications, such as server load balancing cable modem termination.

"The ClassiPI has greatly simplified our next generation software development effort. It has enabled us to improve our performance in key areas and reduce software development time," said Walter Kelt, CSS Engineering Manager, Cisco Systems Inc.

"Over the past year we have successfully deployed ClassiPI silicon to selected customers and have received overwhelming positive reactions to the device's wire speed, deep packet classification features," said Tom Riordan, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra's MIPS Processor Division. "ClassiPI has over a dozen design wins achieved by complex packet processing such as multi-field range lookup."

ClassiPI Software Development Kit Simplifies and Accelerates Networking Equipment Design Development

PMC-Sierra offers a complete Software Development Kit (SDK) for ClassiPI, including a software simulator for the chip, sample applications, sample data plane code, a rule database debugger, rule configuration code and rule management code. An optional ClassiPI-based PCI development card accelerates customer code development.