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Galileo Technology Announces Availability of the First Products in the GalNet-II Architecture Family
Business Wire - July 13, 1998 12:32
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 1998--
High-End Devices Set a New Standard for Features; Low-End Members Shatter Cost/Port Barriers
Galileo Technology (NASDAQ:GALTF), the industry leader in merchant Fast Ethernet switching silicon, today announced the immediate availability of the first products in the GalNet-II Advanced Datacommunications Switching Architecture family.
These new devices provide the performance, integration, and features required in next-generation 10/100/1000 Ethernet switches. GalNet-II Family products enable network equipment manufacturers to develop Fast Ethernet switches at a bill-of-materials cost of under $20 per port -- almost 50% lower than competitive offerings.
"Our new GalNet-II Family devices provide solutions for nearly all classes of Ethernet switching products," said Mitch Kahn, Galileo's vice president of marketing.
"There are GalNet-II Family members that will enable desktop Fast Ethernet switches at street prices of $50 per port. Higher-end members of the GalNet-II Family will enable new capabilities such as IP multicast support, Layer 3 filtering, and IEEE 802.1Q standard VLANs."
Three New Fast Ethernet Switch Controllers
Three of the new GalNet-II Family members are 8-Port Fast Ethernet switch controllers. The devices address different segments within the LAN switching market and differ in the network management features supported. All of the switch controllers are pin compatible enabling OEMs to offer a range of products using the same circuit board and mechanical design.
"Pin compatibility between the GT-4831x devices enables networking OEMs to follow a model similar to the motherboard model in the PC market," Mr. Kahn continued.
"The same hardware can address several market segments, from low-end managed switches all the way to high-end boxes with Layer 3 filtering and multimedia support. The OEM needs only to populate the board with the appropriate GT-4831x device and change the software."
The GT-48310 is the most feature-rich device in the product line. OEMs designing with the GT-48310 will enjoy a feature set unparalleled in its price range. GT-48310 features include:
-- Eight ports of 10/100 Fast Ethernet with support for IEEE 802.3X
standard flow control and proprietary backpressure. Switch
expansion is enabled via Galileo's new 2.4 Gbps G.Link bus.
-- Full wire-speed switching engine with support for more than
12,000 MAC addresses.
-- Full implementation of IEEE 802.1Q standard VLANs and 802.1P
priority queuing. (The GT-48310 is the first production device
to offer this critical capability).
-- Layer 3 filtering and VLAN classification support.
-- IP Multicast filtering to support "push" internet/intranet
applications.
-- Class-of-service/quality-of-service support for applications such
as voice-over-Ethernet and video-over-Ethernet.
-- Support for standard RMON and extended/sampled RMON and RMON-II.
Positioned below the GT-48310 is the GT-48311. The GT-48311
provides a level of management features equivalent to many of today's
workgroup switches, while eliminating features not required in this
segment of the market. Features excluded from the GT-48311 are 802.1Q
VLANs, 802.1P priority, IP Multicast support and layer 3 filtering.
The GT-48312 is ideal for building unmanaged 10/100/1000 switches
in variety of port densities. This device provides a wire-speed
switching engine and expansion capabilities but does not offer any
management functions. At a bill-of-materials of under $15/port in
typical quantities, the GT-48312 represents the most cost-effective
solution for Fast Ethernet switches in the industry.
"There are several clear segments in the Ethernet switching
market," said Mr. Kahn. "We felt it was important to provide our
customers with several cost/feature points that mapped onto their end
product segments. With the three GT-4831x products, we are able to
offer an impressive feature set at the high-end without compromising
cost-per-port on the low end."
GT-48320 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Controller
The new GT-48320 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Controller provides a
single port of Gigabit Ethernet and a full wire speed switching engine
in a single device. The GT-48320 may be used as an uplink in GT-4831x
based systems, or as a building block for pure Gigabit Ethernet
switches. The GT-48320 includes the following features:
-- Compliant with IEEE 802.3z and 802.3ab Gigabit Ethernet
standards.
-- PHY interfaces include both PCS and GMII for connectivity to
today's FibreChannel PHYs and upcoming gigabit MII based PHYs.
-- Hardware support for failover to 10/100 should the Gigabit
Ethernet link fail.
-- Expansion via the 2.4Gbps G.Link bus.
-- All management and switching features found in the GT-48310 Fast
Ethernet switch device.
"We felt it was important to keep the Gigabit Ethernet switching
function separate from the Fast Ethernet device," said Mr. Kahn.
"Separate silicon allows OEMs to offer different combinations of Fast
and Gigabit Ethernet ports in a system.
"This is in contrast to competitive offerings with integrated
Gigabit ports. These solutions typically use the Gigabit port as the
inter-chip connection, thus losing the ability to build mainstream
configurations such as 24 Fast Ethernet ports with a Gigabit Ethernet
uplink."
Two Crossbar Switch Chips also Announced
"With GalNet-II we moved away from our original shared bus
architecture to a hybrid cell crossbar architecture," commented David
Shemla, Galileo's vice president of product definition. "By using
cell-based crossbars we were able to achieve the high bandwidth of
traditional crossbar architectures without the drawbacks.
"Traditional crossbars tend to be expensive due to large signal
counts and they lack the ability to prioritize traffic from multiple
sources. Galileo's hybrid cell crossbars have none of the cost
problems of traditional crossbars while offering outstanding
performance."
The GT-48300 Four Port G.Link Crossbar device provides greater
than 10 Gbps of cut-through crossbar switching between four G.Link
ports. The G.Link ports can be connected to any GalNet-II device.
For example, a 32-port Fast Ethernet switch can be built with
four GT-48310s connected to a single GT-48300. Multiple GT-48300s can
be cascaded in either peer-to-peer or hierarchical arrangements to add
support for more than four G.Link ports.
The GT-48300 also provides the processor interface in a managed
GalNet-II system via its 33/66 MHz 32-bit PCI bus. PCI was chosen
because of the availability of standard CPU chipsets (including those
from Galileo for the MIPS processor family) and because of the high
bandwidth of the interface.
"We felt it was critical to provide a high-bandwidth connection
to the CPU in managed systems," Mr. Shemla continued.
"If you are performing management on ports running at a gigabit
per second, you simply can't afford to squeeze that data through a
simple 8-bit interface. We chose 32-bit PCI since we can achieve
nearly 2Gbps when our crossbars are used in conjunction with Galileo's
66MHz PCI system controllers."
Additional GT-48300 features include:
-- Non-blocking crossbar architecture.
-- Integrated support for quality/class-of-service.
-- High-performance DMA engines for an extremely efficient CPU
interface.
A second crossbar device is also being introduced. The GT-48302
is an eight port G.Link crossbar offering a total non-blocking
bandwidth of greater than 20 Gbps. With a feature set identical to the
GT-48300, the GT-48302 will be used primarily in higher port density
switches.
With the GT-48302, high-performance switches can be built with
up to 64 Fast Ethernet ports, 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports, or
combinations in between.
Low Cost Gigabit Switching and Stacking Capability
Galileo has also developed an extremely low-cost gigabit
switching and stacking capability within the GalNet-II Architecture.
This LVDS-based technology, as described in the GalNet-II Architecture
announcement (also released today), provides gigabit switching at
one-tenth the cost of Gigabit Ethernet.
"We are very excited about the low-cost gigabit switching
solution provided by the GalNet-II Architecture," said Mr. Kahn.
"This capability allows OEMs to provide gigabit top-of-stack
switches that are higher performance than standard Gigabit Ethernet
switches, yet at a cost point that is one-tenth of today's prices.
This solution even maintains connectivity to standard Gigabit Ethernet
when required. It is a rare win-win-win situation."
Management Software and Development Tools
Through a partnership with Kepler Software, Galileo will be
offering basic management software free of charge to our OEM partners.
This management software kit includes:
-- Web Based Management
-- Royalty-free real-time OS (KepOS)
-- SNMP Agent- RFC 1155-1157
-- TCP/IP Protocol Stack
-- Spanning Tree Protocol
-- Standard MIB-II and Bridge MIB
-- Windows 95/NT setup application
Additional software modules that support advanced GalNet-II
features -- such as 802.1Q VLANs and IP Multicast filtering -- are
offered by Kepler Software at a reasonable cost.
Galileo is providing several evaluation boards for the GalNet-II
Family devices. The EV-48300 is a PCI add-in card that includes a
single GT-48300 device and 4 G.Link connectors. The EV-48310-BCOM is
a full eight port 10/100 switch with a single G.Link connector.
The EV-48310-LVDS kit includes two G.Link LVDS stacking boards
and a 3M Corporation LVDS cable. These boards can be mixed and matched
to evaluate a variety of switch implementations.
Price and Availability
The following pricing is for 10,000 unit quantities:
-- GT-48310 8-Port 10/100 Switch with Advanced Management: $96.
Available in production quantities immediately.
-- GT-48311 8-Port 10/100 Switch with Standard Management: $70.
Available in production quantities immediately.
-- GT-48312 8-Port 10/100 Switch without Management: $60. Available
in production quantities immediately.
-- GT-48300 4-Port G.Link Crossbar: $50. Available in production
quantities immediately.
-- GT-48320 Single Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch: $96. Sampling in
September 1998.
-- GT-48302 8-Port G.Link Crossbar: $100. Sampling in September
1998.
About Galileo Technology
Galileo Technology, a market leader in complex data communications systems on silicon, is one of the semiconductor industry's fastest growing suppliers of complex, high-performance, integrated circuit devices.
Galileo's products include single-chip Ethernet switches, high-performance system controllers for RISC processors and WAN coprocessors. Galileo's products form the heart of many advanced data communications systems built by leading OEMs, such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Bay Networks, D-Link, NBase Communications and Intel.
Galileo employs more than 130 people worldwide with business headquarters in San Jose and R&D headquarters in Manof, Israel. For more information on Galileo, call 888/GALTEK-1 or visit our website at galileot.com.
CONTACT: Galileo Technology, Inc.
Christine Morana, 408/367-1400
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