Motorola Leads VMEbus Technology Into a New Era of Innovation

VME Renaissance Begins with a New Bridge to Increase Speed 8x and Enhance Today's VMEbus Technology While Protecting Existing Customer Investments

LONG BEACH, Calif., Jan. 21 -- /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BUS & BOARD INDUSTRY CONFERENCE -- Motorola Computer Group, a part of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) and the leader of the VMEbus technology, today unveiled its strategy to dramatically increase the capability and performance of the VMEbus for key applications in markets such as defense and aerospace, medical and industrial automation. Motorola, one of the original creators of VMEbus 20 years ago, is calling this new initiative the VME Renaissance, a period of innovation and performance improvement that will help deliver significant enhancements over the coming years, while continuing to help protect customer's hardware and software investments.

The VME Renaissance will begin with Motorola's initiative to launch a PCI-X to 2eSST VMEbus bridge codenamed "Tempe." The Tempe chip will implement the 2eSST protocol, which was established as an industry standard by the VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA). The protocol allows the VMEbus to run at a bandwidth of 320MB/s, giving the bus an 8X performance increase over VME64's practical speed. Supporting existing VMEbus protocols, the chip is designed to be backward compatible with existing VMEbus cards, enabling existing cards and new Tempe-enabled cards to work together in the same system. The Tempe chip has a PCI-X bus host-side interface running at up to 133 MHz, which provides transfer rates of up to 1GB/s. This is a 2X improvement over a 64-bit/66 MHz PCI interface.

"Motorola's new VMEbus developments are quite exciting. Their approach recognizes the need to serve VME's large, established user base, as well as the requirement to enhance the capabilities of VME architecture so that it can satisfy rapidly accelerating performance demands," said Eric Gulliksen, analyst from Venture Developers Corp. "In 2001, the VME merchant board market in the US alone was estimated to be $880 million. We anticipate that this new technology may not only insure VME's continued viability, but stimulate healthy growth rates for the entire VME market for the next several years."

"The life extension of any commercial architecture that is currently being used in military systems can only be considered as positive," said Jerry Braun, commercial technology insertion project engineer, Naval Service Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division. "Any architecture enhancement that provides backward compatibility while increasing bandwidth and decreasing latency provides the military with tremendous flexibility when refreshing and inserting new technology into legacy equipment."

Industry Support from OEMs to Partners

Accompanying the Tempe chip is a new set of bus transceivers from Texas Instruments (TI). These new transceivers, coupled with Motorola's Tempe chip, will allow Tempe-enabled boards to achieve 2eSST speeds in existing VMEbus backplanes. "Our complete commitment to moving the VMEbus technology forward is based on helping our current and future customers compete in their respective markets," said Jeffrey Harris, director of research and software architecture, Motorola Computer Group. "As reinforced by the support of key board suppliers and OEMs, it is evident that the next few years will be an exciting era of intense technology infusion and intellectual activity with respect to VMEbus."

"Texas Instruments is looking forward to participating in the VME Renaissance with Motorola to meet the needs of the VME market," stated David Hoover, worldwide marketing manager for Texas Instruments. "We are excited about providing a product that improves signal integrity over backplanes without sacrificing high-speed operation. The TI SN74VMEH22501 solution, chosen by Motorola, provides legacy VMEbus users and current logic backplane designers up to an 8X improvement in overall system performance."

"Completely revamping an infrastructure can be extremely expensive and time consuming, so VMEbus developers such as Motorola are always looking for ways to help customers protect the huge investment they've already made by extending the life of their VMEbus technology," said Ray Alderman, executive director, VITA. "By utilizing the Tempe chip, VITA has no doubt that Motorola will succeed with this new VMEbus Renaissance, bringing a new buzz and injecting a level of excitement into the VME community that will extend far into the future."

ASML, one of the largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers in the world and a key customer of Motorola, is very pleased that Motorola and its industry partners have announced the VME Renaissance initiative. "The planned program of technology enhancements should significantly improve the capabilities of VMEbus in high-end control applications," said Theo van den Akker, manager of electronic development of ASML. "With the support of leading VMEbus manufacturers the program will extend the life of VMEbus and help to protect our investment in the VMEbus technology."

Switched Serial Interconnect Proposal

Another major initiative in the VME Renaissance will be a proposal to the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) to create a standard for switched serial interconnects on the VMEbus. A number of key industry players intend to join Motorola to form a special interest group (SIG) that will co-sponsor this proposal. The major elements in the proposal will:

     -- Add a switched serial interconnect to VMEbus coincident with the
        VMEbus parallel bus;
     -- Employ standard open technology for the switched serial links;
     -- Accommodate multiple standard open technologies for the links, but not
        necessarily at the same time;
     -- Maintain backward compatibility with the VMEbus ecosystem;
     -- Bring more D.C. power onto each VMEbus card.
     -- More details on this SIG will be released in the first quarter of
        2002.
     -- Further enhancements to VMEbus technology will be announced during
        2002 and beyond.

Distribution and Availability

The Tempe chip is expected to be available to all industry players through a 3rd party reseller in fourth quarter of 2002. A complete technical white paper on the Tempe chip is available at www.motorola.com/computer/tempe.

Additional Industry Supporters for VME Renaissance Initiative

Aitech

"Aitech has been very successful in marketing the ruggedized MVME2700 and MVME5100. We are excited about Motorola's new VMEbus chipset and initiatives," said Gabriel Leemor, vice president of marketing and sales, Aitech. "We believe that these will revitalize the VME market and bring the VMEbus technology to the next level. We are looking forward to participating with Motorola in meeting the needs of the VME market."

CERN

"VMEbus has served us well at CERN over many years and by bringing the technology to a new level, Motorola and its industry partners will allow us to use it in new ways as well as protect our current investment," said Chris Parkman, senior engineer, CERN.

Mercury Computers Systems

"The VME Renaissance initiative demonstrates that VME continues to be a platform for innovation," stated Richard Jaenicke, director of product marketing, Mercury Computer Systems. "Mercury is committed to providing the latest processing and communication technology in VME-based systems, and we will continue to work closely with Motorola to keep VME on the leading edge."

Radstone Technology

"Radstone Technology is pleased to be associated with Motorola's initiative to bring new levels of performance to VME based systems," said Peter Cavill, managing director, Radstone Technology. "We will be working closely with Motorola to develop products which will enable Radstone's customers to take advantage of the new Tempe chip as soon as it becomes available. Motorola is providing the enabling technology to extend VME's leadership position in the embedded computing market for many years to come."

SBS Technologies

"Committed to keeping our customers at the forefront of innovative technologies, SBS is pleased to contribute its industry expertise to Motorola's next generation VME bridge chip initiative," states Clarence Peckham, government group president, SBS Technologies. "This new technology will improve the performance of VMEbus solutions and better address the evolving needs of our government customers."

SKY Computers

"SKY Computers supports Motorola's new Tempe chip and is working closely with Motorola to support the needs of our VME customers," said Mark Pacelle, vice president of marketing, SKY Computers. "As a leading producer of VME systems, SKY will utilize the Tempe chip to provide our customers with higher performance within their VME legacy systems. This new capability will be especially important to our customers in the defense community because it will make technology insertions and upgrades easier throughout the program lifecycle."

Thales Computers

"Thales Computers is excited to join Motorola and support the VME Renaissance to extend the legacy of VME," said Robert Negre, vice president of product development and marketing, Thales Computers. "We are looking forward to seeing many companies team with us in serving the needs of the VME market."

Themis

"Themis has embraced Motorola's VME initiatives," said Bill Kehret, Themis' president and CEO. "Our customers stand to benefit from the new Tempe chip, which will provide significant performance advantages for providers who have a large investment in VME."

Tundra Semiconductor

"The VME Renaissance initiative takes VME to the next step and delivers a migration path for VME customers to next-generation system interconnect architectures," said Rick O'Connor, chief technology officer, Tundra Semiconductor. "As the leader in system interconnect, we at Tundra support this initiative and are dedicated to ensuring the same continuum of support to our customers."

VMIC

"VMIC is pleased to be supporting Motorola's new Tempe chip. As a leading supplier of VME products, we are excited about working closely with Motorola on these initiatives to support the needs of our VME customers," said Michael Darnell, vice president of sales and marketing, VMIC.

About Motorola

Motorola Computer Group is a business unit of the Motorola Integrated Electronic Systems Sector (IESS). It is the world's leading supplier of embedded computing platforms for equipment manufacturers in telecommunications, network storage, imaging, medical equipment and semiconductor production and test equipment industries, with core competencies in services and training, design, manufacturing and systems integration capabilities. IESS is a leading provider of advanced electronic products and systems for customers integrating electronics into their products. Motorola IESS solutions provide the brains that make electronic systems simpler, safer, smarter and more synchronized. www.motorola.com/computer

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) is a global leader in providing integrated communications solutions and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2000 were $37.6 billion. www.motorola.com

MOTOROLA, the Stylized M Logo and all other trademarks indicated as such herein are trademarks of Motorola, Inc. (R) Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.