Vitesse Offers Industry's Highest Integration in its Third Generation, 160Gb/s Intelligent Switch Fabric.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CAMARILLO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2001

TeraStream(R) Offers Low Risk Implementation at OC-192 Line Rates

Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (Nasdaq:VTSS) today released technical details for its third generation Intelligent Switch Fabric, the TeraStream(R) chipset. TeraStream extends Vitesse's switch fabric product portfolio to serve the high-end metro and core equipment markets. Five out of the top six network equipment vendors have chosen the Vitesse switch fabric solution for their next generation systems. This feature-rich chipset supports OC-48 and OC-192 port speeds with a maximum aggregate user bandwidth of 160Gb/s. TeraStream is the newest member of Vitesse's ubiquitous switch fabric platform, joining the successful GigaStream(TM) and CrossStream(TM) products to bring over 50 design wins to this family.

This highly integrated chipset incorporates fabric functionality into two components, the VSC871 Queuing Engine on the line card, and the VSC881 Packet Exchange Matrix(TM) on the switch card, providing the industry's highest level of integration for designers of switches and routers. The Queuing Engine device communicates entirely in-band with the Package Exchange Matrix device via integrated SerDes. This eliminates the need for any additional components and simplifies system design. As compared to other switching solutions, TeraStream provides all of the fabric functionality including queuing, scheduling, SerDes, backplane communication, full redundancy, and optimized switching in only two ICs. A fully redundant 160Gb/s system only requires 24 TeraStream chips, 16 on the line cards and 4 per switch card, versus a typical switch fabric implementation of more than 200 chips. With the industry's lowest component count implementation, Vitesse's TeraStream product provides the lowest overall power and cost solution.

"For many networking system designers, the ability to build a high port density switch fabric that offers true non-blocking performance for a broad array of transports and protocols will remain a key first step to create the next generation of intelligent edge and core systems that will be deployed in the market," said Sean Lavey, an analyst with IDC. "Increased usage of highly integrated merchant switch fabric chipsets, in order to reduce the time of designing these multi-service systems, will continue to be a growing trend in the future, especially as network OEMs migrate away from ASIC based architectures and focus on other areas of the system where its differentiation is more valued."

TeraStream's Queuing Engine offers queuing granularity with separate unicast and multicast support, each with 16 classes of traffic, as well as virtual output queues to eliminate head-of-line blocking. The unique integrated queuing structure in TeraStream's Packet Exchange Matrix buffers the ingress traffic and executes multicast replication to relieve congestion and provide more efficient ingress bandwidth utilization across the backplane.

For design flexibility, TeraStream can be configured for up to 16 ports of OC-192 data or 64 ports of OC-48 data or any combination of both up to a maximum of 160Gb/s of aggregate user bandwidth. There is an additional 2x speedup in the backplane. In addition to the active backplane communication, the Queuing Engine employs integrated redundant SerDes to support a 1+1 redundancy scheme with the addition of a single switch card. This redundancy scheme offers end-to-end error protection and a mechanism for maintaining resources during faulty conditions, ensuring zero loss of traffic and continuous operation.

The Queuing Engine has a CSIX interface that supports both OC-48 and OC-192 traffic, increasing the designer's ability to interface with Vitesse's or any CSIX-compatible, third party traffic manager or network processor. Using the CSIX standard interface increases design flexibility and promotes interoperability with best-of-breed components.

"TeraStream leverages several years of Vitesse's high-speed serial link technology that has been implemented with our previous generation switch fabrics: CrossStream(TM) and GigaStream(TM)," said Anita Weemaes, product marketing manager at Vitesse. "With Vitesse's proven transceiver technology, industry-standard CSIX interfaces, and a standard 0.18um CMOS process, TeraStream ensures first pass system success today."

"The addition of TeraStream to Vitesse's intelligent switch fabric family provides networking OEMs a choice of solutions tailored to best meet their system requirements, from the access to the core network," stated Barry Sandefur, vice president and general manager of Vitesse's Advanced Networking Products Division. "The Vitesse switch fabric products complement the company's extensive portfolio of network processors, traffic management engines, physical layer devices and optical components."

TeraStream will be available in production quantities in December, 2001. The VSC871 Queuing Engine is packaged in a 784-pin BGA, and the VSC881 Packet Exchange Matrix is offered in a 520-pin BGA package.

Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation is a leading designer and supplier of innovative, high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) and optical modules used in next generation networking and optical communications equipment. The Company's products address the needs of Enterprise, Access, Metro, Core, and Optical Transport network equipment manufacturers who demand a robust combination of high-speed, high-service delivery and low-power dissipation in their products. In concert with its broad communications product portfolio, Vitesse also develops ICs for storage area networking and enclosure management. Vitesse is headquartered in Camarillo, Calif., and operates two fabrication facilities: one in Camarillo and one in Colorado Springs, Colo. Company and product information can be found on the web at www.vitesse.com or is available by calling 1-800-VITESSE.