Agere Announces Breakthrough System Chips for Telecom Service Providers


System-on-a-Chip (SoC) Solutions Are World's Most Integrated Mapper and Framer Chips


ALLENTOWN --/June 07, 2004 Wi-Fi Technology News/-- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A, AGR.B) today announced two breakthrough system-on-a-chip (SoC) product families that pave the way for wireline and wireless service providers to generate more revenues, by adding new and efficient service capabilities to their existing and next-generation access and broadband networks.

Agere's Datamapper? and MARS? T-PHY - the world's most integrated mapper and framer chips respectively - are versatile transport system chips for improving network performance and growing revenue-generating services. The chips help drive this growth particularly in fast-growing markets such as the online gaming and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) markets. These two new chip families further strengthen Agere's portfolio of No. 1 worldwide rankings in sales of mapper, framer, and traffic management chips**.

Connecticut-based Mangrove Systems, Inc., has selected Agere's Datamapper and MARS T-PHY for its new MetroMPLS?*** access and metro equipment platforms. Both Agere and Mangrove plan to show their new products at the SUPERCOMM trade show held June 21-24 in Chicago (Agere Booth 24800); (Mangrove Booth 25529).

Agere's Datamapper, which integrates more than 30 functions, is the world's first Ethernet-over-Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) mapper chip with integrated traffic management. This integration allows equipment vendors to slash costs by offering a six-fold reduction in software effort and a 50 percent reduction in mapping and traffic management silicon costs. Agere's massive integration enables the company's equipment customers to condense typical equipment used today, about the size of three stacked pizza boxes set side by side, down to one integrated system the size of one pizza box. The unmatched integration also enables service providers to converge wireless and wireline offerings within a single platform - a major industry trend - and thereby reduce their overall equipment and operational costs.

Similarly, Agere's MARS-T-PHY is the world's first framer family to combine a feature- rich, network-hardened 16-channel OC-3/OC-12 (155 Megabits per second [Mbits/s]/622 Mbits/s); four-channel OC-48 (2.5 Gbits/s); and single OC-192 (10 Gbits/s) framer with 16 multi-rate, auto detect clock and data recovery (CDR)/mux/demux physical layer interfaces (PHYs). These interfaces meet the most demanding SONET timing specifications. A software-compatible successor to Agere's groundbreaking MARS-T-Universal chip, this device continues to drive optical networking price per port, power per port, and line card density to new benchmark levels.

The integration offered by MARS-T-PHY reduces framer and clock silicon costs by approximately 30 percent. When combined with the auto rate detect feature in the integrated multi-rate CDR, the chip enables the design of a single equipment line card that supports all SONET/SDH rates. This consolidation reduces manufacturer's development costs and lowers service providers inventory-carrying and maintenance costs.

"The digital tsunami [a very large ocean wave] that will be hitting the broadband infrastructure due to on-line gaming in the next few years is shocking," said Eric Mantion, senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "Unlike web traffic, which can easily be mitigated by web caches, on-line gaming traffic goes right to a service provider's uplink and is extremely sensitive to even minor latencies [delays]. When tied to a similar surge in voice-over-Internet-protocol traffic, the next generation of networking gear for broadband providers will have to be more focused on traffic management and QoS than ever before.

"Luckily, Agere's two new SoC product families should allow network equipment providers to create just the right kind of solution at just the right time," he added. "The tremendous amount of integration found in these chips will allow the next generation of broadband gear to do everything they need to, while still being simpler in design than the previous generation."

On a single SoC, Datamapper combines the following major functions: a layer two processing engine and traffic manager; SONET PHY; framer; mapper; cross connect; data engine; virtual concatenation (VC); generic framing procedure - framed and transparent (GFP-F/T); media access controller (MAC); SPI-3 bus for connectivity to a co-processor; and high-speed SerDes (serializer/deserializer). Datamapper demonstrates the intelligence required to manage, organize and schedule different varieties of Quality of Service (QoS) levels. This functionality is similar in concept to a world-leading package delivery company that offers overnight, next day, first class, second class, and bulk delivery options, at different prices.

Using Agere's technology, for example, service providers can deliver the fastest, highest and most tunable bandwidth and highest-priority services to their premium service level customers, and lesser services at lower prices to others. In addition, Datamapper enables service providers to offer their top customers per-service guarantees for mission critical, time-sensitive services that cannot tolerate delays-such as on-line gaming--while allowing them to oversubscribe their networks to generate more revenue from more users.

"It often takes a revolutionary technology or radical change in thinking to enable the next step in the network evolution to occur," said Jonathan Reeves, president and CEO of Mangrove Systems. "By using Agere's Datamapper and MARS T-PHY system-on-a-chip solutions, Mangrove addresses a major industry challenge of extending Pseudowire, MPLS and Ethernet service delivery over SONET/SDH in the access and metro networks. Agere's technologies enable Mangrove to accomplish this using fewer silicon chips and lowering equipment costs, while improving the range of services that can be supported in a single converged platform."

Agere's new chips also accelerate deployment of smaller and less expensive Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) equipment and services into rural and remote areas. DSL has been slower to roll out in such areas compared with more metropolitan areas in part because equipment has been too large and expensive to deploy.

"Mangrove's selection of Agere's mappers with integrated traffic management and framers is particularly important to our company, because of Mangrove's intense focus, which Agere shares, on improving the economics, revenue-generating services, and reliability of leading next-generation access equipment," said Samir Samhouri, marketing director with the Agere Systems' Multiservice Networking Division.

Agere has already begun shipping both its Datamapper and MARS-T-PHY solutions. In quantities of 10,000 units the Datamaper device prices range from $250 to $500, depending on version; and likewise, the MARS-T-PHY price ranges from $402 to $680.

For more product information, customers may call the Agere Systems Customer Response Center, 1-800-372-2447 (or direct dial: 610-712-4323), Dept. B17 (in Canada, 1-800-553-2448, Dept. B17, fax number 1-610-712-4106, especially for callers outside of North America) or write to Agere Systems, Room 10A-301C, 1110 American Parkway NE, Lehigh Valley Central Campus, Allentown, Pa. 18109. Customers may also email: docmaster@agere.com.

Agere Systems is a global leader in semiconductors for storage, wireless data, and public and enterprise networks. The company's chips and software power a broad range of computing and communications applications, from cell phones, PCs, PDAs, hard disk drives and gaming devices to the world's most sophisticated wireless and wireline networks. Agere's customers include the top manufacturers of consumer electronics, communications and computing equipment. Agere's products make personal broadband a reality, connecting people to information and entertainment--at home, at work and on the road.

Founded in 2002 by one of the industry's most experienced technology leadership teams, Mangrove Systems is developing a family of innovative MetroMPLS? Access and Switching platforms that bridge the divide between today's TDM-based access and metro network and the rapidly evolving MPLS core. Mangrove's MetroMPLS is the first solution to enable end-to-end MPLS networking. Mangrove Systems is located in Wallingford, CT. For more information visit: http://www.mangrovesystems.com.

Contacts:

Charlie Hartley (Agere Systems)
610-712-1728
cjhartley@agere.com

Vibha Agrawal (Agere Systems)
610-712-1737
vagrawal@agere.com