Virtexä and Spartanä FPGAs to be used for new IP Service Switch
SAN JOSE, Calif., October 25, 1999 —Xilinx,
Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) announced today that technology leader Spring
Tide Networks
chose Xilinxâ field
programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) instead of an application specific integrated
circuit (ASIC) for its IP Service Switch 5000. Spring Tide selected Xilinx
Virtex and SpartanXL devices based on the strong set of Xilinx development
tools, design flexibility and device performance.
"We began working with Xilinx as soon as we assembled our team. As a start-up, time-to-market was our overriding concern. Working with Xilinx was a very simple decision for us because Xilinx offered tremendous gate density and speed," said Steve Akers, co-founder and chief technology officer. "As a result, we were able to leverage Xilinx products to achieve our design objectives while avoiding the risk associated with an ambitious ASIC project."
Spring Tide has designed the IP Service Switch 5000 specifically to extend a rich set of existing and emerging Internet protocol (IP) services, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), easily and profitably via the evolving "service layer" within the business quality public IP network. "For our company, it was critical that we get to market quickly. Embarking on an ambitious ASIC program would have introduced too much risk," said Bob Sullebarger, vice president of marketing for Spring Tide. "We've seen several companies make the big bet on ASIC science projects only to come up empty and disappoint their investors."
"We are pleased to be working with a technology leader such as Spring Tide Networks," said Xilinx president and CEO Wim Roelandts. "The Virtex devices are already proving to our customers the time-saving advantages that FPGAs bring to their design cycle. The density and performance levels, combined with the popular system-level features and industry-leading FPGA price points, make Virtex-E FPGAs an even more compelling alternative to ASICs."
Xilinx Virtex devices with 500,000 system gates serve separate functions on Spring Tide's IP Service Switch as a front-end packet scheduler to feed streams to the dual PowerPC processors on the packet processor, and as a scheduler for the security subsystem. Spring Tide's IP Service Switch is a new class of product that makes offering business quality network services as straightforward as offering common telephone services. The IP Service Switch 5000 is the only "any-to-any" data transport services tunnel switch, capable of full, any user/any time/any where service delivery. Only the The IP Service Switch 5000 can take a data flow protected by any tunneling protocol at one end of a transmission, and switch it out into any type of tunnel on the other side. The IP Service Switch 5000 handles IP security (Apices), point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP), point-to-point protocol over asynchronous transfer mode (PPP/ATM), PP. over Ether net (Pope), IP/IP or Layer 2 tunneling protocol (L2TP). The 5000 processes as many as 100,000 simultaneous secure customer sessions in an ISP’s point of presence, without sacrificing Quality of Service or performance goals. Competing switches can process and track only a small fraction of the Service Switch 5000’s 100,000 connections. The IP Service Switch 5000 switches all flows at line speed, regardless of any value-added processing (such as encryption), with less than 50 microseconds latency. The IP Service Switch 5000 connects to any access device at the edge of the network and any backbone switching device at the core.
Xilinx Virtex series FPGAs range from 50,000 to one-million system gates at clock speeds up to 200 MHz, and include many features that address system-level design challenges. Xilinx recently announced the delivery of the initial members of its next generation Virtex-E FPGA family. Virtex-E devices will feature up to three million system gates, supporting three times the system-gate density and 50 percent higher I/O performance of the original Virtex FPGAs.
The Xilinx Spartan series was created to displace low-end (up to 40K system gates) ASICs in volume production by providing the advantages of fast development-to-production time and in-system reprogrammability at competitive prices. Using an advanced process technology, the Spartan Series substantially reduced die size over the previous generation of FPGAs while measurably improving gate density and performance.
About Spring Tide Networks
Spring Tide Networks develops carrier-class networking equipment that
extends a rich set of business-quality IP services anywhere in the new
public IP network with the same reliability and simplicity as the telephone
network. Spring Tide's Pipeline Packet Flow architecture guarantees performance,
scalability and flexibility across a greater variety of network services
than any competing solution. The Massachusetts-based company is privately
owned and venture-capital funded. For more information visit the company
Web site at www.springtidenet.com.
About Xilinx
Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx Web site at www.xilinx.com.
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