SiberCore Delivers Industry's First Plug and Play Co-Processor Solution for the Intel IXP2400 Development Platform

TCAM Modular Card and Classification Software

Simplify Design and Improve Performance

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 2002--SiberCore Technologies today announced that its plug and play co-processor solution has been fully tested and integrated with the Intel® IXP2400 development platform. The SCTB2409-B TCAM modular card, software development kit (SDK) and reference software provide customers with a complete solution that simplifies design and improves performance of OC-48 and OC-192 equipment such as metro, edge and core routers and Enterprise LAN switches.

The SCTB2409-B modular card includes a SiberCAM Ultra-9M co-processor, providing 9Mb of ternary content addressable memory (TCAM), and 32Mb of associated and indirection data SRAM for forwarding and classification storage. The card is supplied with SiberCore's SDK, which includes a cycle-accurate Foreign Object Model (FOM) for the Microengine Development Environment of the Intel® Internet Exchange Architecture Software Development Kit (IXA SDK) 3.0, as well as software for the Intel® Xscale(TM) control plane and microengine data plane. The SCTB2409-B modular card plugs directly onto the Intel IXP2400 development platform through the QDR SRAM/Network Processing Forum LA-1 interface.

The solution will be demonstrated at the NPC West show, booth #516.

Industry's most complete SDK eases system design, speeds time-to-market

SiberCore's FOM provides a C-model of the TCAM, which simulates all internal registers and instructions with a flexible simulator control, including clock frequency ratios, lookup latency parameters, and output trace and lookup states. The FOM allows design teams to debug microengine data plane applications and measure system performance. The simulation model is provided as a Windows 2000 dynamic link library (DLL), and is customizable to meet requirements of multiple system configurations.

SiberCore's modular and layered control plane application programming interface (API) provides control, initialization, search and maintenance functions for the Intel IXP2400 network processor. The data plane software is written in native assembly language, and includes a cycle- and data-accurate simulation model, viewer, software debug tools, and a complete set of macros for search and maintenance functions in the packet processing fast-path. It also provides a behavioral model, which emulates the SiberCore device, used for debugging control plane applications. The library will run on VxWorks and Linux operating systems.

"Our close collaboration with Intel has accelerated our leadership in the network co-processor market," said Graham Allan, Director of Marketing, SiberCore Technologies. "We are the only co-processor vendor to offer a hardware and software development solution that has been fully tested and verified in silicon. We are now passing this leadership to our customers, ensuring that system prototypes will migrate seamlessly to manufactured solutions."

Forwarding and classification software reduces clock cycles by up to 60 percent

SiberCore's TCAM solution provides software code to perform IPv4 forwarding and header checks in addition to classification, thereby reducing clock cycles by as much as 60% compared to memory-based algorithmic solutions. The savings includes lower instruction counts and latency bounds, which can be utilized by designers to implement further revenue generating applications in the system. Reduced latency and bus loading also eases board layout for efficient system design.

"The addition of SiberCore's TCAM card and software suite to the Intel IXP2400 development platform provides our customers with the additional capabilities for a variety of applications and will help systems to market quickly," said Nick Finamore, General Manager, Network Processor Division, Intel Corporation.

The SiberCore co-processing hardware and FOM function seamlessly with either Intel IXP2400 or IXP2800 network processor. Using the SiberCore solution, system designers can maximize the engineering development reuse in designs that transition from the Intel IXP2400 to the IXP2800 network processor. This maximizes code portability and dramatically reduces time-to-market for new designs.

SiberCore is a participating member of the Intel® IXA Developers Network, which ensures that customers have access to the industry's leading packet forwarding and classification co-processors.

SiberCAM packet management solutions for network processors

SiberCore offers the widest range of TCAMs on the market, with pin-compatible 2M, 9M, 18M and future 36M devices. The family is designed for optimal performance and efficiency, with a unique three-port interface, dynamic variable word width support, and a very efficient low-power design. The company's SiberCAM devices and forwarding and classification co-processing solutions interface to most industry network processors, and are designed to scale for next-generation system requirements.

Availability

The SiberCore SCTB2409-B TCAM modular card is available now, and is priced at US $2400. The SiberCore SDK is also available now, supported by extensive written documentation, including user guides, user manuals, and data plane macro library.

About SiberCore Technologies

SiberCore Technologies is a fabless communications semiconductor company providing silicon-based packet management products and solutions to the Internet infrastructure market. The Company's initial products are packet forwarding engines, based on Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) technology, that are designed to overcome the most onerous performance bottlenecks in the data communications market -- packet forwarding and classification. SiberCore's unique architectural and design innovations give the SiberCAM family of products significant advantages in terms of capacity, speed, feature set and power reduction. SiberCore is located in Ottawa, Canada's high technology capital. The company's web site is located at www.sibercore.com.

SiberCore and SiberCAM are trademarks of SiberCore Technologies.

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

All other products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

     SiberCore Technologies
     Graham Allan, 613/271-8100 x249
     Director of Marketing
     allan@sibercore.com
       or
     Shane Bracewell, 613/271-8100 x381
     Manager, Business Development
     shane@sibercore.com
       or
     HIPR, Inc.
     Tiana Dixon, 503/222-1257
     tiana_wiersma@qwest.net