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"Chesapeake delivers the highest performance of any network processor on the market today while using the lowest power per Gbps in its class," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group. "These unique capabilities will help Bay expand its market opportunities and continue its rapid revenue growth."

Chesapeake is rapidly becoming the heart of systems built to provide residential broadband consumers with robust, high quality user experiences. With an unprecedented 125G of raw engine performance, Chesapeake eliminates design roadblocks and bandwidth bottlenecks. Because video matters -- Chesapeake's Multimedia Traffic Management capabilities uniquely provide the agility to manage the cost-effective delivery of converged voice, video and data services. As a result, numerous networking OEMs have already committed to Chesapeake for their next generation systems.

"Chesapeake is the highest performance, most feature-rich integrated network processor we have seen," said John Sandschulte, vice president of engineering and general manager for Broadband Networking at Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. "We are very impressed and look forward to incorporating it into our next generation systems."

"For the first time in more than five years, service providers are specifying and demanding new infrastructure equipment which has resulted in a frenzy of global design activity," said Chuck Gershman, president and CEO of Bay Microsystems. "The customer response to Chesapeake has been overwhelming. Whether it is access, metro, edge or transport equipment applications, Chesapeake has quickly established itself as the processor of choice for building next generation residential broadband network elements."

The Bay Advantage

Chesapeake is a major leap forward in network processor technology and provides a scalable performance path to 100G Ethernet. The initial version of Chesapeake, announced today, is targeted for system configurations ranging from high density over-subscribed 1GE/10GE Metro Ethernet boxes to high reliability systems up to 40G and beyond, such as:

    -- Metro Ethernet aggregation switch/routers
    -- Core switches and IP/MPLS Routers
    -- Triple Play and Quad Play network elements
    -- Next generation packet-aware optical transport elements
    -- Multi-service Switching Platforms (MSPP, MSSP)
    -- IPv6-enabled network elements
    -- MPLS- and PWE3-enabled network elements (LER, LSR)
    -- Secure network elements supporting Layer 2/3 VPNs
    -- High-touch security appliance and controllers
    -- Metro/Transport network elements supporting GFP or RPR
    -- Session Border Controllers
    -- DSL, Wireless, Cable and PON aggregation platforms

    Pricing and Availability

Metro Ethernet solutions designed with Chesapeake are being implemented at price points as low as $40 per GE port and less than $400 per 10GE port. Bay is supporting design starts and accepting sample orders now. Bay also provides a complete hardware and software tool suite facilitating Chesapeake- based network equipment designs.

See Chesapeake at Globalcomm in Chicago

Bay will be demonstrating the capabilities of Chesapeake at booth #35058, June 5th thru 7th at the Globalcomm2006 Conference in Chicago, Illinois USA. Please contact Bay to schedule a private demonstration at Email Contact.

About Bay Microsystems

Bay Microsystems is one of the fastest growing communications semiconductor companies. As the recognized global leader in high-performance, programmable network and transport processors, its award winning products enable the delivery of converged voice, video, data and multimedia and have been deployed in mission-critical service provider, enterprise and government networks since 2003. Bay announced profitability in June, 2005 and its customers include many leading government, telecom and network equipment manufacturers. For more information please visit www.baymicrosystems.com.

NOTE: Bay Microsystems, BayPort, Biscayne, Chesapeake, Montego, MTM, The Network is the Experience and Internetworking Processor are trademarks of Bay Microsystems, Inc. Other brands, product names and marks are trademarks of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Tim Helms of Helms Communications, +1-925-606-6936, or
Email Contact

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