Infineon Introduces Development Platform for High-density MTU/MDU Switches Combining 10BaseS & Ethernet interfaces

May 7, 2001 | Market News

Las Vegas, Nevada, - May 7, 2001 – Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), a leading provider of Communications Integrated Circuits, today unveiled an innovative development platform for the fast-growing multi tenant unit/multi dwelling unit (MTU/MDU) market that combines the company’s proven 10BaseS and Ethernet switching technologies. The new platform, consisting of a board plus software, provides network system manufacturers and OEMs with considerable cost-savings and time-to-market efficiencies by offering high-performance, highly integrated switches with combined Ethernet and 10BaseS interfaces.

“According to the latest Cahners In-stat report, the market for MTU/MDU market for services and hardware is expected to reach 8.5 billion dollars by 2005, and as competition intensifies, pressure on equipment providers to provide cost-efficient high-performance systems will undoubtedly increase,” said Daniel Wong, vice president of Infineon's communications group and general manager of the LAN Business Unit. “The new development platform announced today illustrates Infineon’s powerful capability in converging technologies to provide the most advanced and self-contained solutions in the communications space.”

Infineon’s 10BaseS, Ethernet over VDSL, offers the fastest speed and largest capacity copper communication technology currently available for the MTU/MDU market. With an extended Ethernet range of over 4000 ft, 10BaseS is a simple and cost effective alternative to existing broadband delivery and LAN extension solutions. Infineon's highly integrated AR2224 switch-on-a-chip provides the platform's switching engine, supporting wire speed data traffic among the board's combination of 10BaseS, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Gigabit port can be used for connection to proxy servers or for uplinks to the ISP. When used for uplinks, a small daughter card can provide either a standard optical gigabit interface or a full/subrate T3 link using Infineon´s new smart plug n' play physical layer device TE3-FALC. In addition, switch management software bundled with the development board offers system providers with a complete and feature-rich development environment for MTU/MDU switches

About 10BaseS™


10BaseS is a highly integrated, low-power, Ethernet over VDSL Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) solution. The line rate is full duplex 11.25 Mbps and is transparent to the 10 Mbps Ethernet network. Unlike other Ethernet solutions, it does not require costly Cat 5 cabling. It makes use of the existing copper pair, while maintaining full integrity for distances of over 4000 ft. 10BaseS is a highly integrated building block with CPU, Clock, AGC and Memory. It provides glue-less compatibility with RMII, SMII, seven wire and IEEE 802.3 Ethernet MII interfaces reducing design complexity, cost and time to market. Configured as an Ethernet PHY it can be used in switch, DSLAM or network interface card (NIC) applications. The chipset can also be configured as a media access controller (MAC) for standalone control of Ethernet PHY devices in customer premise equipment applications.

About the AR2224


The AR2224 architecture provides for a low cost, low-component count and low power implementation of standalone and stackable Fast Ethernet switches. The highly integrated device features 24 10/100 (FE) ports and two Gigabit (GE) ports and is designed to sustain full-duplex wire speed traffic on all ports simultaneously. The Gigabit links can be used as uplinks or for stacking. The chip also offers trunking capability, up to 8 FE links or 2 1G links can be aggregated together; multiple trunks per chip are supported.

Wind River’s Tornado for Managed Switches (TMS) 2.0 is fully integrated with Infineon’s AR2224 Ethernet switch-on-a-chip. TMS 2.0 combines the most complete suite of layer 2 and layer 3 protocols and applications with the Tornado integrated development environment (IDE) and the VxWorks® real-time operating system (RTOS).

Availability


The development platform Ar2224-Ref-10BaseS provides 16 ports of 10/100 Ethernet ports, 4 10BaseS ports, a Gigabit uplink for WAN connection and full management capabilities. It is priced at $5,000 and will be available for customer shipment in June 2001.


About Infineon


Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2000 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.28 billion with about 29,000 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com.


Infineon, the stylized Infineon Technologies design are trademarks and servicemarks of Infineon Technologies AG. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Any statements in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties; actual results may differ from the forward-looking statements. Infineon Technologies undertakes no obligation to publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Information Number

INFCOM200105.078e