Fast-Chip Announces Next Generation OC-192 / OC-48 PolicyEdge Services Processors and RouteExpand Policy Expander Chip
Latest Chipset Enables Millions of Policy Entries with Industry's Best Price/Performance Metrics
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2002--
Fast-Chip, Inc., the first supplier of 10 Gigabit communication
processing ICs for advanced service applications, today announced its
second generation PolicyEdge(TM) Services Processor chipset, featuring
the companion RouteExpand(TM) policy expander device. Now, Fast-Chip
can provide a high-performance, highly scalable solution for OC-48 and
OC-192 core, metro and access aggregation applications, with policy
and statistics entries in the millions.
Second Generation Processor Adds Features, Eliminates Interface
Shims
PolicyEdge was the industry's first single chip 10 Gigabit packet
processor, shipping since September 2001. The second generation
PolicyEdge OC-192 FC6402 and OC-48 FC6302 are two times faster than
the flagship devices, performing up to 1.3 billion packet operations
and 187 million service operations per second. All PolicyEdge devices
perform hierarchical, multi-pass classification, editing, forwarding,
policing and statistics collection functions, with minimum latency. A
significant new feature on the FC6402 is multifunction I/Os, which
convert between SPI4.2, xGMII, SPI4.1 and other OEM interfaces,
eliminating expensive shims between complementary processing devices.
Other enhanced features on the new parts include additional policy
compression and packet editing for TCP/IP checksum, TTL and hash.
"The PolicyEdge/RouteExpand chipset enhances the ability for
enterprises and service providers to process very large policy tables
with significant metric improvements over TCAM based solutions," said
Russell Johnson, Director, Switching and Routing Semiconductors, RHK,
Inc. "This set of characteristics should have broad appeal to OEMs
demanding the flexibility of RISC based NPUs and the deterministic
performance of ASICs for service-intensive applications."
The PolicyEdge contains an embedded policy and statistics
database, sufficient for applications from 3,000 to 15,000
subscribers. Statistics resources include a byte, packet and
programmable timer per rule. Adding two low cost PCDRAMs, yields four
policing filters per rule, providing on-the-fly enforcement for
QoS/CoS SLAs, bandwidth metering and DoS hardening.
More than a search solution
RouteExpand, a look-aside companion device to the PolicyEdge,
expands the policy database for large numbers of IPv4 / IPv6 routes,
Ethernet addresses, VPI / VCI / MPLS labels and hundreds of thousands
of virtual tables. RouteExpand's route / rule entries and associated
statistics / actions are stored in standard Reduced Latency DRAM
(RLDRAM) devices. RouteExpand and six 288Mb RLDRAMs implement 64 bit
exact or 32 bit longest prefix matches (LPM) for any combination of
two million routes, one million flows or 128K virtual route tables.
Using x36 RLDRAMs, RouteExpand supports carrier class reliability with
full error correction capability (ECC). RouteExpand and six 576Mb
(available 2003) RLDRAMs will double all of these metrics.
"High-performance RLDRAM is ideal for high speed random access
applications requiring large amounts of memory," said Doug Bolen,
Micron Strategic Marketing Manager. "Fast-Chip leverages these RLDRAM
properties to produce one of the fastest and largest search solutions
for the networking market today."
RouteExpand maintains up to two million per flow statistics,
providing a programmable timer and packet or byte count per entry,
coupled with global thresholds that trigger bandwidth, matching and
timer actions. These statistics resources implement flow based
policing and enforcement of subscriber SLAs. Actions may also include
host notification to handle bridge auto-learning and aging of entries
using onboard watchdog timers. In addition to statistics and
multifunction I/O capabilities, RouteExpand provides three times the
performance, one third the footprint, one fifth the power and one
sixth the cost of comparable packet processing solutions using CAM
search memories.
Programming in weeks not months
PolicyEdge's unique hierarchical table-driven architecture matches
the system designers approach to network programming, speeding time to
functionality. The designer uses "C" on a host CPU to program the
PolicyEdge's single-threaded, run-to-completion, table-driven model.
To further simplify programming, Fast-Chip provides a powerful API,
also in C, and an embedded silicon API on the PolicyEdge. All code is
targeted to the control plane processor that generates the necessary
rule table behaviors of the PolicyEdge. PolicyEdge has a dedicated
host port and supports control plane requests / messages "on-the-fly".
Because the architecture is optimized for general purpose multi-pass
bit-level classification, editing and policing, the device can be
programmed to process SONET frames as easily as AppleTalk. Customers
have reported that programming efforts that previously took months
using micro-coded NPs and/or multiple RISC engines, can be completed
in a matter of weeks using PolicyEdge.
"Most packet processors are store-and-forward architectures,
requiring multiple CAM, SRAM and DRAM support chips to achieve a
solution," said Gregg Cook, CEO of Fast-Chip. "Fast-Chip's
architecture eliminates external memory and expensive shim chips for
many applications. For full featured routing and access applications,
customers can now support millions of flow based policies using our
table-driven programming model in significantly less time."
PolicyEdge and RouteExpand communicate over a dedicated high-speed
expansion bus. RouteExpand's table structure is a transparent
extension of PolicyEdge's simple programming API, which can rapidly
develop large route and label tables, without having to program both
devices. RouteExpand leverages PolicyEdge's pipelined processing
architecture, using patented algorithms to maintain the performance
needed for OC-192 designs.
The chipset is supported by Fast-Chip's latest C simulator and
software APIs, allowing complete modeling of all new features and
large route tables. Fast-Chip's multi-rate OC-48, OC-192 and 10 GbE
development platforms will also support RouteExpand daughtercards to
test applications at wirespeed.
Pricing and Availability
Sampling in August 2002, the OC-48 PolicyEdge FC6302 is available
for under $250 in 5,000 units. The OC-192 PolicyEdge FC6402 is
available for under $350 in the same quantities. The RouteExpand
FC6500 will be under $275 for either line rate, in 5,000 units.
About Fast-Chip, Inc.
Fast-Chip is a fabless semiconductor company delivering
communication processing ICs that enable the deployment of premium,
billable services to network OEMs.
Fast-Chip's high performance PolicyEdge(TM) Services Processor
offers:
- A single chip device with the industry's best
price/performance metrics
- Granular multi-port aggregation processing for thousands of
T1/DS1 Interfaces
- Fast Time-to-Market with simple, yet powerful table-driven
programming model
- Flexibility for ASIC, NPU and CPU implementations of box,
blade and line cards
The PolicyEdge(TM) Services Processor delivers multi-protocol,
multi-pass classification, editing, forwarding, policing and
statistics collection at 10 gigabit per second, for 40 byte packets.
This level of service capability with deterministic performance
enables robust multi-port aggregation, as well as clear channel
support up to OC-192/10GE.
PolicyEdge devices add intelligence to a wide range of next
generation products:
-- Multi-Service Switches
-- Metro Switches
-- Content Switches
-- Stateful Firewalls
-- Network Probes
-- Enterprise Routers
-- Multi-Protocol Routers
-- LSR and LER IP Routers
-- DSLARs
-- Wireless Base Stations
Investors include Berkeley International Capital Corporation,
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Venture Partners, and Intel Capital.
Additional information can be found at www.fast-chip.com
Contact:
Fast-Chip, Inc.
Cathy Browne, 408/523-8066
cathy_browne@fast-chip.com
Craig Chidlow, 408/523-8060
craig_chidlow@fast-chip.com
