Agere Systems Unveils Industry's First Single-Chip 48-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch and Lowest Power Octal PHY

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040618/AGERELOGO )

The company's new products target the growing market for GbE chips, expected to exceed $1 billion in 2005, according to industry analyst firm IDC.

Agere's TruePHY(TM) ET1081 octal PHY has a power consumption of less than 500 milliwatts per port. The powerful combination of Agere's patent-pending TruePHY technology coupled with the significant levels of integration on the single-chip 48-port switch provides manufacturers a 50 percent lower total chip count and 35 percent lower power consumption which equates to significantly lower overall cost of ownership. Agere's solution uses seven chips -- one switch system on a chip (SoC) and six octal PHYs -- to build a complete 48-port GbE switch with two 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s) Ethernet ports. Competing solutions require as many as 17 chips for the same solution. In a board level environment, Agere's solution reduces the printed circuit board space by about 30 percent and cuts the system failure rate in half.

"It has been less than a year since we acquired our switch business and already we have achieved several significant milestones in the GbE chip market. We've raised the bar for the industry in terms of performance, and we're winning customers in the marketplace," said Ed Roberts, vice president and general manager of Agere's Ethernet business. "Together with the industry's lowest-power octal PHY, Agere is providing the industry's most complete switch-on-a-chip and multi-PHY system solution to most effectively address the requirements for any enterprise switch. Our team has engineered a new generation of silicon technology that significantly cuts system level costs and development time and brings our customers a whole range of new enhanced features."

The Industry's First Single-Chip 48-port Switch

The four new GbE switch-on-a-chip devices are part of Agere's ET4K family of switching silicon. The ET4000 is a single-chip switch device supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The ET4100 is a single-chip switch device supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports, with four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gb/s Ethernet ports. The ET4001 is a single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The ET4101 is a single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports, four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gb/s Ethernet ports.

The ET4K family of switching devices are built upon an innovative new architecture and application software algorithms that achieve the industry's highest integration level while maintaining wire speed performance. The ET4K architecture supports L2/L3/L4 packet processing at wire speed, thus enabling throughput of more than 104 million packets per second. ET4K also offers a best-in-class access control list (ACL) function, a feature essential to providing network security, including the defense of denial of service attacks. In addition to supporting IPv4, the ET4K family represents one of the industry's first silicon solutions to support native IPv6 capability.

Shipping to Industry-Leading ODMs

"Agere is the first company to deliver a complete solution that works for our next-generation switch platforms with the most integrated multi-port chipset we have seen," said Ken Lu, co-founder and senior vice president of Accton Technology Corporation. "Ethernet technology is the core to Accton's focus. Because of its high level of integration and extremely low power, we've designed the chip into our ES4550 switching systems to deliver the high levels of performance including compelling cost per port and power per port metrics that are important to our OEM customers."

Original design manufacturers (ODMs) such as Accton and Delta are becoming increasingly important in the electronics industry supply chain as they provide system design and manufacturing capabilities for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who use their services.

"OEMs are increasingly asking us to provide higher port density and lower power switching solutions," said James Chiang, product manager at Delta Networks. "Agere's delivery of the ET4K family and ET1081 octal PHY will enable us to deliver the promise of competitive Gigabit Ethernet to our customers."

The Industry's Lowest-Power Octal PHY

TruePHY technology enables the lowest total power per port at the .13 micron technology node. The TruePHY ET1081 octal device is ideally suited not only for bringing the ultimate peak density of 48 ports in a 1U "pizza box" form factor, but it is also highly desirable in fast growing 2U 96-port bladed applications such as those utilizing the global Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) standard. Also inherent in the TruePHY architecture is the industry's most highly advanced cable diagnostics, with the precision and accuracy to pinpoint a break in 100 meters or more of standard CAT5 cabling. To ensure seamless interoperability and faster customer validation, Agere's TruePHY technology is compliant with University of New Hampshire test specifications.

These four ET4K switch SoCs and the ET1081 octal TruePHY device are coming to market as part of Agere's strategy to take share in the GbE networking silicon market with the August 2003 acquisition of Irish GbE PHY specialist Massana Ltd. and the January 2004 acquisition of Ethernet switch-on-chip team TeraBlaze Inc.

The Agere introductions come at a time when Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony is becoming more prevalent and sophisticated in the enterprise, as innovative OEMs add video functionality as well as Power-over-Ethernet technology. Agere's GbE switch silicon has been built and will continue to be built with these technology trends in mind.

All five devices announced today are actively sampling and will be available in production quantities in the first quarter of 2005. These products are already designed into key ODM and OEM platforms.

Customers in the U.S. may call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center at 1-800-372-2447. Customers in Canada may call 1-800-553-2448. Customers outside those countries may call 1-610-712-4323. Fax inquiries may be directed to 1-610-712-4106, or e-mail queries to docmaster@agere.com. Written inquiries should be sent to Agere Systems, Room 10A-301C, 1110 American Parkway NE, Lehigh Valley Central Campus, Allentown, PA, 18109, USA.

Agere Systems is a global leader in semiconductors for storage, wireless data, and public and enterprise networks. The company's chips and software power a broad range of computing and communications applications, from cell phones, PCs, PDAs, hard disk drives and gaming devices to the world's most sophisticated wireless and wireline networks. Agere's customers include the top manufacturers of consumer electronics, communications and computing equipment. Agere's products connect people to information and entertainment at home, at work and on the road -- making personal broadband a reality. More information about Agere is available on its web site http://www.agere.com/.

Agere is a registered trademark and TruePHY, Agere Systems and the Agere Systems logo are trademarks of Agere Systems Inc.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on information currently available to Agere. Agere's actual results could differ materially from the results stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, our ability to keep pace with technological change, our dependence on new product development, price and product competition, availability of manufacturing capacity, customer demand for our products and services, general industry and market conditions, and our reliance on major customers and suppliers. For a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2003, and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2004. Agere disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACT: Steven Goldsmith, +1-610-712-6737, +1-484-553-0419 (mobile),
goldsmith@agere.com; or Vibha Agrawal, +1-610-712-1737, +1-908-256-6234
(mobile), vagrawal@agere.com, both of Agere Systems

Web site: http://www.agere.com/