Spirent Communications Offers Trio of Test Solutions for Chip Manufacturers; SmartBits Products Help Designers Validate Functionality and Performance of Chip Designs.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

CALABASAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 2000

Spirent Communications today introduced a pair of new SmartBits(R) test solutions that are ideally suited for communications chip manufacturers.

The new LAN-3150A RMII/SMII and GX-1421A MII/GMII modules along with the already available SX-7210 MII module offer the most comprehensive set of tools for chip vendors. These three modules, along with associated software test suites, give chip vendors the ability to test their communications chip designs.

For the first time, chip designers, test engineers and production engineers will be able to use the SmartBits for testing all common Ethernet digital interfaces: MII (Media Independent Interface), RMII (Reduced Media Independent Interface), SMII (Serial Media Independent Interface) and GMII (Gigabit Media Independent Interface).

The LAN-3150A module is an eight-port 10/100Mbps Ethernet RMII/SMII test module designed to operate with either RMII or SMII physical layer DUTs. The GX-1421A is a single-port 100/1000Base GMII Ethernet SmartCard designed to operate with either GMII or MII physical layer DUTs. Designed to operate in either the SmartBits 2000 or SmartBits 200.

The SX-7210 is single-port 10/100 Ethernet MII SmartCard(TM) designed to operate with a standard MII interface. All three solutions provide a comprehensive traffic generation and analysis capabilities at wire rate speeds. Powerful software tools such as SmartWindow(TM), and ScriptCenter(TM) provide easy to use GUI and a platform independent script automation environment respectively.

Applications notes detailing the physical interface specifications for the LAN-3150A and GX-1421A are available on the Spirent Communications SmartBits Web site at www.spirentcom.com/chipsolutions/.

"Several chip manufacturers wanted to start applying the power of SmartBits to validate their chip designs and have asked us to provide these solutions," said Bahaa Moukadam, Spirent Communications, senior director, product marketing for SmartBits Systems. "Working closely with our customers, we were able to offer these solutions very quickly to the benefit of the networking industry."

The SX-7210, GX-1421A, and LAN-3150A are all available now.

About Spirent Communications

Spirent Communications is the world leader in performance analysis solutions. The company designs and manufactures Abacus, Adtech, DLS, GSS, Metrohm, SmartBits and TAS products to provide customers with a full-breadth of comprehensive and integrated performance analysis test solutions. Spirent Communications' solutions accelerate development and minimize the risk of deployment of new communications technologies.

SmartBits products have become the industry standard for network performance analysis systems, generating and analyzing traffic, at full wire rate, over hundreds of ports for: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, Packet over SONET, ATM, Frame Relay, WAN, xDSL and Cable Modem networks.

SmartBits award winning hardware and software applications are used by more than 1300 of the world's leading network equipment manufacturers, network service providers, corporate enterprises and test laboratories to measure the performance of networks and network devices.

For more information on Spirent Communications or SmartBits products, visit the Web site at www.spirentcom.com or call 1/800/927-2660.

SmartBits is a registered trademark of Spirent Communications. SmartWindow and ScriptCenter and SmartCard are trademarks of Spirent Communications. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.