Velio Communications Debuts With Breakthrough Silicon Designs for Optical Systems; Developing Terabit-On-A-Chip.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2000

Major Advancements In Power, Scalability And Signaling

Enable Rapid Deployment Of Multi-Terabit Optical Switching Systems

Velio Communications, Inc., an emerging semiconductor company, has achieved major design and technology breakthroughs that resolve switching core bottlenecks and signal integrity issues, enabling equipment vendors to rapidly design and deploy optical switching platforms supporting thousands of OC-48 (2.5Gb/s) and OC-192 (10Gb/s) ports and hundreds of OC-768 (40Gb/s) ports.

With advancements in scalability, signal integrity and power consumption, Velio customers can more quickly design and build next generation switching systems that support the massive bandwidth requirements demanded in the optical network. Velio also expects to be the first to market with a terabit of switching capacity on a single silicon device. Velio products are intended for deployment in optical cross connects/lambda routers, DWDM SONET/SDH grooming systems, IP/MPLS switch/routers and 10Gb Ethernet switch/routers.

There is a big market for high performance optical equipment for long haul and metro applications, according to Scott Clavenna, president of PointEast Research (Cambridge, MA). "Equipment manufacturers are racing to market with a new class of SONET grooming systems capable of scaling from hundreds to thousands of 2.5 and 10Gb/s ports," Clavenna said. "Velio is the only silicon vendor I'm aware of tackling the difficult intra-system interconnect issues. They're well positioned to help optical equipment manufacturers rapidly build and deploy multi-terabit grooming systems."

The Velio Design Approach

New classes of carrier system equipment need high performance backplanes capable of supporting multi-terabits of capacity while maintaining signaling integrity at very high speeds. The new class of equipment also needs to address the severe power constraints and real-estate restrictions that are imposed by the central office and co-location facilities in which this equipment resides. Equipment that uses hundreds of watts of power less than other systems or enables much greater capacity in a shelf rack gets a carrier's attention.

To address these issues, Velio focused its design in three areas: 1) integrating low-power serial input/output ports directly onto the switch fabric to maximize densities and greatly reduce overall device count; 2) applying custom circuit design techniques to deliver an integrated switch core that scales from 1/3Tb/s upwards to a full Tb/s on a single device; and 3) delivering signal integrity at these high speeds by focusing on the unique characteristics of the electrical and optical backplanes required in a carrier system.

Using standard CMOS processes, Velio has achieved major milestones in its quest to achieve new levels of integration and density. In addition to directly integrating very high-speed interfaces onto its fabrics, Velio has been able to employ extremely low power circuit design mechanisms to address internal switching functions, thus allowing hundreds of gigabits to be switched with just a few watts of power.

"From the beginning our vision has been to become a dominant supplier of high-bandwidth semiconductors for the optical equipment market," said Raju Chekuri, founder, president and CEO of Velio Communications. "With design acceptance already in place with major customers, we're well on our way to establishing Velio as an important player in the enabling of the optical carrier market."

The Velio Product Roadmap

Velio has design-ins for all four of its product line areas at major established equipment vendors as well as with emerging communications companies focused on addressing intelligence and scalability in the optical networking segment. Complete details will be released when the products are ready for shipping over the next three quarters. In December 2000, Velio will announce details of its Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) backplane transceivers. In 1Q01, Velio will provide details of its SONET/SDH grooming switches, and in 2Q01, Velio will announce its cross-point space switch and eye-opener devices. A brief overview of each product line is described below.

-- SONET/SDH grooming switches that will provide a 72x72 STS-48 cross-connect
for 180Gb/s aggregate bandwidth, with grooming down to the STS-1 (51Mb/s)
level. The device can support full cross connecting of 3,456 simultaneous
STS-1s. The switch device has integrated SerDes and associated clock/data
recovery (CDR) functions. It is non-blocking for unicast and multicast traffic
and can be configured in multi-stage Clos networks to deliver multiple terabit
performance. Details of the SONET/SDH grooming switches will be provided in the
first quarter next year.

-- Large port count cross-point space switch fabrics for use as building blocks
in optical core platforms and lambda routers. Sized more than twice the port
count of current space switches. The devices have integrated CDRs on every
port, which provides for a very flexible 1.0-3.125Gb/s serial cross-point
switch design. When configured in a three-stage Clos network, the space switch
can deliver in excess of 30Tb/s. A detailed announcement of the space switch
will be made in 2Q01.

-- SerDes ICs serialize and deserialize low-speed parallel interfaces to
high-speed serial connections. Velio is developing an initial family of octal
devices at 2.5 and 3.125Gb/s targeted at 1Gb/s and 10Gb/s Ethernet and
SONET-based systems. Key advantages over existing SerDes are in power
consumption, signal integrity and density. Announcement of the SerDes products
will be made in December.

-- Eye-openers are serial-in/serial-out devices used in parallel optics and
short-distance copper applications. Eye-openers remove jitter and retime
signals along a channel or backplane for transmission. These devices are used
throughout the system platforms of all the major communication segments.
Details on the Velio eye-openers will be announced in 2Q01.

About Velio Communications

Velio Communications is a leading provider of silicon devices that solve the intra-system communications issues of scalable optical carrier equipment. CEO Raju Chekuri, a former Cadence executive, and two researchers, Dr. Bill Dally of Stanford University, and Dr. John Poulton of University of North Carolina founded the company in late 1998 as Chip2Chip. Dally is the chief technology officer and Poulton is the chief circuit architect for Velio, and both have extensive experience in high speed serial interconnect as well as in major system architecture and design. Sena Reddy, formerly with MMC Networks and Cirrus Logic and a pioneer in the fabless semiconductor model, is Velio's chief operating officer. In the past year Velio has rounded out a complete senior management team across all functional areas. The company has raised more than $50 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital, IVP, Global Catalyst Partners, Capital Research Group and HarbourVest Partners.

Velio is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has design centers in Lowell, Massachusetts and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The company now has more than 80 employees. For more information on Velio Communications, visit www.velio.com or contact the company at [phone].