CSIX Group Announces Eleven Founding Members
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 1999--
New CSIX Specification Expected to Significantly Reduce Design
Costs and Improve Time to Market for Switching Systems
The Common Switch Interface (CSIX) Group today announced that it has reached key milestones toward its goal of establishing a de-facto industry standard for interconnecting key data and telecommunications components. The Group announced that it has attracted some of the industry's most respected merchant silicon companies as founding members of the organization. In addition, the group has completed an early draft of the specification which defines a set of mandatory features and functions.
Founding CSIX members announced today include Applied Microcircuits Corporation, Broadcom Corp., C-Port Corp., Growth Networks, Maker Communications, Power X, Silicon Access, SiTera Corp., Vertex Networks, Vitesse and XaQti.
"The CSIX specification has the potential to do for communications processing and switching what the Utopia interface has done for ATM," said Jeremey Donovan, senior analyst with Dataquest. "The presence of eleven influential members bodes well for the future of this technology."
System vendors are taking a positive view toward the CSIX work. "We, at Hitachi, have been endorsing CSIX since its inception," said Randy Minobe, director of product development at Hitachi Internetworking. "Ensuring that merchant silicon products interoperate via CSIX helps us meet our time to market requirements. It also provides us with implementation flexibility, by offering multiple vendor choices to help hit our various product cost points."
The CSIX group was organized in February 1999 to create and promote a Common Switch Interface (CSIX) between core interconnect fabric silicon and upper layer switch processing silicon for data/telecommunications switching systems. This standard CSIX approach is expected to significantly reduce design costs and time to market for systems vendors by enabling them to design modular, scaleable, reusable network switching architectures.
Currently, network systems vendors use custom Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and other silicon solutions that they must integrate each time they develop a product. Using products that comply with the CSIX specification will enable them to choose processor and fabric solutions from a variety of vendors and be confident that the products will interoperate. Network vendors can use the inherent modularity of CSIX-based products to quickly extend basic product designs into a family of products.
The initial draft of the CSIX specification provides for multi-gigabit/second switching capacity (with the ability for scaling to multi-terabits/second,) multiple priority levels, unicast, multi-cast and user-to-user data streams, and support for both synchronous and asynchronous clocks at speeds up to 100MHz. The group also defined additional functions and capabilities to be added in the next draft of the specification, including support for carrier-class operations. The final CSIX interface specification is expected to be completed by May 2000.
"We are off to a great start," said Colin K. Mick executive director of CSIX. "If we can maintain our momentum, we should meet our objectives of completing the specification by 2Q2000 and having initial CSIX-compliant products before the end of 3Q2000."
The next CSIX meeting will be held on June 30th. Companies interested in joining CSIX or learning more about the CSIX charter should visit the CSIX website at www.csix.org, or contact Colin Mick, executive director of CSIX, at ckm@mickgroup.com. -0- *T
COMMENTS FROM CSIX MEMBERS
C-PORT: Andrew Funk, Director of Engineering (978-974-9317 ext 234, andrew.funk@cportcorp.com) "By ensuring interoperability among a range of switching and fabric components, the CSIX specification will enable network equipment vendors to choose exactly the features they need to develop innovative products quickly. C-Port is committed to working with the other CSIX members to get this open specification into the market as soon as possible."
GROWTH NETWORKS: Guru Parulkar, chief technical officer (650-210-8100, guru@growthnetworks.com) "We are actively encouraging CSIX to focus on the carrier space. Because of tremendous growth in this area, the system vendors are experiencing significant pressure to keep up with the increasing industry demands. The CSIX specification will greatly facilitate system vendors' development and purchasing decisions, as they plan for new ways to satisfy market and customer needs."
POWER X: Russell Johnson, VP sales and marketing (+44 161 286 2000, russell@px.uk.com, px.uk.com) "From the outset of creating the TeraChannel(TM) interconnect fabric, Power X recognized the need for interoperability standards with complementary silicon. Our vision of a scalable high performance merchant silicon platform for the communications industry is embodied in the CSIX specification and is now being realized through the effort and support of fellow CSIX Group members. This open, protocol-independent interface provides a solid foundation for the future rapid growth of the carrier and enterprise network markets."
SILICON ACCESS: Rex Naden, Sr. VP marketing (408 545 1110, rex@siliconaccess.com) "We are pleased to be participating in the CSIX effort to standardize a switch chip interface. Vendors of both fabric and port processor switch chips are beginning to incorporate large amounts of on-board embedded memory. Comprehending the presence of such memory in the CSIX standard will enhance its scalability and thereby pave the way for higher functionality and lower cost for network system OEMs."
SITERA: Steve Flannery, president (303-651-1000, stevef@sitera.com) "The CSIX open interface provides network equipment vendors with choices that optimize both the network processor and switching fabric solution. System designers can quickly scale their next generation products by selecting the best combination of processing power and throughput. This standard makes it very easy to 'reuse' CSIX-based designs."
VERTEX NETWORKS: Tim Thompson, VP marketing (949-252-8880 x103, timt@vertex-networks.com) "The CSIX specification is very exciting because it enables network vendors to use off-the shelf processor and fabric silicon as the foundations for their products and invest their resources on features that add value and differentiate their products."
XAQTI: Samba Murthy, VP marketing and business development (408-986-4391, samba.murthy@xaqti.com) "The CSIX standards effort will deliver multi-vendor plug and play fabric and packet processor chip solutions for next generation of network boxes. The market demand for open architecture, multi vendor solutions will be satisfied through this effort." *T
CONTACT:
The Mick Group
Colin Mick, 650/856-3666
ckm@mickgroup.com |
