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PMC-Sierra Announces Enhanced Carrier-Class Multi-Service Residential Gateway Solution

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 May 2006, 06:00 CDT

PMC-Sierra's MSP7100 Gateway Platform Enables IP Multimedia and VoIP Delivery with Superior Quality of Service

PMC-Sierra, Inc. (Nasdaq:PMCS) today announced an enhanced residential gateway platform to enable flexible and reliable delivery of carrier-grade services into the digital home. The solution is based on PMC-Sierra's new VoIP-enabled Multi-Service Processor(R) (MSP) family, the MSP7120 for ADSL2+ and the MSP7130 for Passive Optical Networks (PON) and VDSL. These System-on-Chip (SoC) products provide the foundation for robust delivery of advanced IP services, such as IPTV, VoIP and multimedia services, into the digital home via the home network. The MSP7100 gateway platform delivers:

-- 180,000 packets-per-second IP forwarding performance to support new high-bandwidth broadband access technologies, such as VDSL2 and Fiber-To-The-Home;

-- A multi-service residential gateway platform that enables the co-existence of Quality of Service (QoS)-sensitive services, such as VoIP and IPTV, and best-effort services, such as file-sharing and Internet access, within the digital home; and

-- Enhanced control and visibility for carrier remote management.

Leveraging PMC-Sierra's background in carrier-grade VoIP solutions, the MSP7100 residential gateway includes a reference design with ADSL2+, VDSL2 and Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) WAN interface options, and a feature-rich software package (see Figures 1 - 4).

"PMC-Sierra's residential gateway platform provides breakthrough performance and flexibility for our High-Speed Broadband CPE solutions," said Hong-Yuh Lee, President of Arcadyan, a provider of a full line of state-of-the-art access points, home gateways, embedded solutions and multimedia receivers and blasters. "The multi-threaded data path offers the dramatic packet throughput improvements plus carrier-class QoS, integrated VoIP and superior security that our customers demand."

The current home network environment is unable to support the more lucrative advanced services, such as IP video, that require near-zero packet loss, low packet jitter and latency. The digital home will require the seamless integration of WAN and LAN technologies, wireless connectivity, as well as consumer appliances, applications and services. PMC-Sierra's residential gateway platform provides a central gateway as the control and distribution point of the home network and delivers a reliable, managed multi-service-capable system. It offers software intelligence to support simultaneous multi-service scenarios -- VoIP, IPTV, media and data -- with carrier-grade service quality (see Figure 5).

"The driving force behind the development of the MSP7100 residential gateway was to build a foundation that enables the next wave of digital convergence," said Dino Bekis, vice president of marketing and applications for PMC-Sierra's Communication Products Division. "This platform leverages our carrier-certified VoIP solutions, design and networking expertise to bring a compelling solution to market. The MSP7100 residential gateway platform's ability to provide superior throughput, quality of service and remote management enables carriers to deliver profit-generating enhanced IP services into the digital home."

MSP7100 Platform Enables Enhanced IP Services

Capable of supporting bidirectional wire-rate Fast Ethernet forwarding of small packets, PMC-Sierra's residential gateway solution is able to perform complex traffic management, routing, bridging and firewalling tasks on a large amount of simultaneous traffic transiting both the LAN and WAN networks. The MSP7100 gateway solution provides:

-- A powerful hardware multi-threaded MIPS32 system processor, providing extremely flexible and efficient packet processing with a superior ability to provide QoS priority to identified traffic flows, such as video, resulting in reduced jitter, latency and packet loss, as well as a superior software programming model versus multi-core architectures;

-- A 300 percent packet throughput improvement compared to single-threaded processors of similar frequency;

-- Guaranteed data path performance through Dynamic Multi-Processing Core technology, featuring an advanced QoS feature set and enhanced control and visibility for remote management;

-- Hardware IPSec acceleration for enhanced security features;

-- Robust VoIP terminal adaptor functionality, which is field-hardened and production-deployed worldwide; and

-- An Open Source programming model that leverages standard tools and a large software ecosystem.

"PMC-Sierra's new MSP7100 multi-service processor is the first product on the market featuring MIPS Technologies' 34K hardware multi-threaded core," said Joseph Byrne, Senior Analyst at The Linley Group. "Hardware multi-threading and processor virtualization are effective means to accelerate packet processing and enable allocation of dedicated bandwidth to critical tasks. The combination of these features provides guaranteed performance to time-sensitive gateway functions and services."

The MSP7120 has an integrated ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ modem that uses Aware, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AWRE) field-hardened StratiPHY2+(TM) IP and interfaces gluelessly to PMC-Sierra's PM4381 ADSL2+ Analog Front End (AFE) device. Alternatively, the MSP7130 provides an Ethernet WAN interface for support of VDSL2, xPON or home router applications. Both devices have PCI, USB2.0 host/client interface and a TDM interface for connection to external SLIC/SLAC devices (see Figure 6).

Linux-Based Software Development Kit Accelerates Development

The MSP7100 gateway platform is supported by the MSP7100 Linux Residential Gateway Software Development Kit (SDK). Based on the Linux 2.6 OS, this SDK enables customers to quickly design high-performance, multimedia and multi-service, VoIP-enabled broadband residential gateways. The MSP7100 SDK includes:

-- The Multi-Threaded Networking Software Solution Package (SSP), a high-performance networking stack with rich QoS features; and

-- A Management Framework SSP, enabling rapid integration of various management clients into the Multi-Threaded Networking SSP with complete support for the TR-098 data models required for TR-069 remote manageability.

Optionally, the SDK includes PMC-Sierra's VoIP Gateway SSP, which provides carrier-certified VoIP terminal adaptor functionality to the residential gateway.

Demonstrations at GLOBALCOMM(TM) and Computex Taipei

PMC-Sierra will be demonstrating the new MSP7100 residential gateway platform at GLOBALCOMM in Booth 52043, from June 5-7 in Chicago, Ill., and at Computex Taipei in a customer-meeting suite, from June 6-10 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Product Availability, Whitepapers and Customer Support

Samples of the devices will be available in Q2 2006. Product briefs and a whitepaper, Next-Generation Residential Gateways, may be found on PMC-Sierra's web site at www.pmc-sierra.com/digital-home. A comprehensive support package, including programmers' guides, reference designs and development boards, is available upon request. For more information about pricing and availability, contact a PMC-Sierra sales representative at http://www.pmc-sierra.com/contactSales.

About PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra(TM) is a leading provider of broadband communications and storage semiconductors for metro, access, fiber to the home, wireless infrastructure, storage, laser printers and customer premises equipment. PMC-Sierra offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe, Israel and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information, visit www.pmc-sierra.com.

Attachments:

Figure 1: MSP7100 ADSL2+ Residential Gateway Block Diagram

Figure 2: MSP7100 GE Home Router Residential Gateway Block Diagram

Figure 3: MSP7100 EPON Residential Gateway Block Diagram

Figure 4: MSP7100 VDSL2 Residential Gateway Block Diagram

Figure 5: Digital Home Vision and the Residential Gateway

Figure 6: MSP7120 Block Diagram

For figures visit: http://www.pmc-sierra.com/pressRoom/pdf/MSP7100_figures.pdf

For photos visit: http://www.pmc-sierra.com/pressRoom/images/MSP7100.JPG

Resources to Extend Your Product Knowledge and Understanding

PMC-Sierra CPE Products www.pmc-sierra.com/digital-home

PMC-Sierra New Products www.pmc-sierra.com/products/newProducts.html

PMC-Sierra Webinars www.pmc-sierra.com/webinars

(C) Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2006. All rights reserved. PMC and Multi-Service Processor are registered trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. in the United States and other countries. PMC-SIERRA, PMCS and "Thinking You can Build On" are trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. StratiPHY2+ is a trademark of Aware, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: Business Wire

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