Agere Unveils Single-Chip 48-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Agere Systems announced the availability of a single-chip 48-port Gigabit Ethern

et (GbE) switching chip family and the lowest power GbE octal physical layer device (PHY).

The four new GbE switch-on-a-chip devices are part of Agere's ET4K family of switching silicon. The first device is a single-chip switch supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The second device is a single-chip switch supporting 24 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet ports, with four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gbps Ethernet ports. The third device is a single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet ports and four Gigabit SerDes ports. The fourth device is a single-chip switch device supporting 48 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet ports, four Gigabit SerDes ports and two 10 Gbps Ethernet ports.



Agere's TruePHY octal PHY has a power consumption of less than 500 milliwatts per port. The company estimates the combination of its TruePHY technology coupled with the significant levels of integration on the single-chip 48-port switch provides manufacturers a 50% lower total chip count and 35% lower power consumption. 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 Gbps Ethernet ports. Competing solutions require as many as 17 chips for the same solution.



Agere is currently shipping these chips to original design manufacturers (ODMs) Accton Technology Corporation and Delta Networks. 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. http://www.agere.com/