StarGen Announces $15.5M Series B1 Funding; Demonstrates Strong Support for Interconnects Based on Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) and PCI Express (PCIe) Standards.MARLBOROUGH, Mass. -- StarGen, a fabless semiconductor company A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry or "fab. and the first to market with serial interconnect solutions based on the Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI ASI,n See Anxiety Sensitivity Index. ) standard and PCI Express A high-speed peripheral interconnect from Intel introduced in 2002. Note that although sometimes abbreviated "PCX," PCI Express is not the same as "PCI-X" (see PCI-SIG and PCI-X for comparison). As a result of the confusion, "PCI-E" or "PCIe" is the accepted abbreviation. (PCIe), announced today it has successfully raised an additional $15.5M round to fund next generation development and sales expansion. This round complements the prior round, closed in June 2004, bringing total capital invested in StarGen for ASI development to $24M. Investors in both rounds include; Morgenthaler, Vesbridge Partners, Intel Capital, Commonwealth Capital, Eastward Capital Partners, and Ironside Ventures. "System OEMs in compute, storage, and communication markets are beginning the move from in-house development of application specific integrated circuits Integrated circuits Miniature electronic circuits produced within and upon a single semiconductor crystal, usually silicon. Integrated circuits range in complexity from simple logic circuits and amplifiers, about 1/20 in. (1. (ASICs), which take hundreds of man years and often tens of millions of dollars in development expense, to products based on open standards Specifications for hardware and software that are developed by a standards organization or a consortium involved in supporting a standard. Available to the public for developing compliant products, open standards imply "open systems;" that an existing component in a system can be replaced from merchant silicon providers like StarGen", commented Tim Miller, President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. . "With our AXSys product line of ASI/PCIe compliant switches, bridges, and software, our customers can get to market for roughly 1/10 the cost and 1/2 of the time compared to custom approaches. In addition, they benefit from an open standards sourcing model, providing risk mitigation and cost benefits." The market for standards-based system area interconnects, which are used to connect multiple processors and system components together at rates up to 16Gbps, is expected to grow by more than 500% from late 2004 to $375M by early 2008 according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Jag Bolaria, Senior Analyst at the Linley Group(a). Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) is developed and maintained as an open standard by the ASI-SIG ASI-SIG Advanced Switching Interconnect Special Interest Group (www.asi.org), composed of over 60 companies. ASI extends the capabilities of PCI Express by adding features which enable true peer-to-peer processor communication, advanced QoS, high availability Also called "RAS" (reliability, availability, serviceability) or "fault resilient," it refers to a multiprocessing system that can quickly recover from a failure. There may be a minute or two of downtime while one system switches over to another, but processing will continue. , and native support for a wide variety of protocols routinely used in communication and storage applications. These capabilities are mandatory for use in emerging standard platforms such as AdvancedTCA. "The StarGen team is composed of proven innovators and business leaders", said Zenas Hutcheson, Managing Partner of Vesbridge Partners. "We have been involved with the company since they were founded and have worked actively with them over the past several years to develop this new high performance switched interconnect model that is clearly required for continuing innovation in blade server A server architecture that houses multiple server modules ("blades") in a single chassis. It is widely used in datacenters to save space and improve system management. Either self-standing or rack mounted, the chassis provides the power supply, and each blade has its own CPU, memory and , storage array, and next generation communication systems." "Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) is a fundamental extension of PCI Express that is critical to system designers who need to add advanced quality of service, high availability, and multi-protocol features to their next generation systems," said Tim Coll, Logic Analyzer (1) A device that monitors computer performance by timing various segments of the running programs. The total running time and the time spent in selected program modules is displayed in order to isolate the least efficient code. Marketing Manager with Agilent Technologies This article needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. . "Agilent is pleased to collaborate on ASI development with an industry leader like StarGen." The series B1 round will be used to enhance StarGen's sales and marketing presence and to augment the first generation ASI product portfolio with complementary devices. About AXSys Architecture AXSys, announced in March 2005 with initial customer samples shipping in June 2005, is the industry's first full suite of ASI compliant silicon and software that meets the performance, scalability, and flexibility demands for chip-to-chip and board-to-board interconnects in next generation compute, storage, and communication applications. The AXSys architecture is comprised of a complementary family of switches, bridges, product development kits and a robust software suite. OEMs who implement the AXSys architecture are guaranteed 100% compliance to the ASI specification, full compatibility with PCI Express and future ASI SIG defined endpoints, as well as the ability to fully implement the ASI SIG fabric management software suite. For more information on AXSys, please see related releases at www.stargen.com/news. About StarGen StarGen, based in Marlborough, MA, is a fabless semiconductor company providing unified interconnect solutions for compute and communication markets. StarGen's AXSys product line is based on the emerging Advanced Switching Interconnect (ASI) standard and targets system OEMs developing platforms for compute, storage and communication applications. StarGen's successful 1st generation product, StarFabric, extends legacy PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). applications and is currently in use in over 75 designs with greater than 250,000 ports shipped around the world. Additional company and product information is available at www.stargen.com. (a) "A Guide to Switch Fabrics, 4th Edition" , Linley Group, June 2005 Note to editors: PCI Express is a trademark of PCI-SIG. Advanced Switching Interconnect and ASI are trademarks of the ASI-SIG. StarFabric and AXSys are trademarks of StarGen. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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