Early testing proves performance claims of 200 ns latency and sustained 240 Gbps throughput in a single chip

CALABASAS, CA. – Jan. 31, 2006 – Fulcrum Microsystems today announced it is sampling the FM2224, the first device in its breakthrough FocalPoint family of low-latency 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch semiconductors.

Testing of the first silicon has shown that the device delivers on the company's claims of 200 nanoseconds (ns) of total latency, and sustained full-rate throughput – up to 10 Gbps – on all 24 ports.

"Initially, many customers were cautiously optimistic about our performance and latency claims based on the fact that no Ethernet switch chip vendor has ever come close to meeting the targets that we set out to achieve," said Bob Nunn, Fulcrum president and CEO. "Now that we have successfully demonstrated both the performance and latency specifications, and begun sampling silicon and evaluation platforms, we are gratified by the customer excitement surrounding our FocalPoint family."

Since first announcing the FocalPoint family in November, Fulcrum has received first silicon, brought up the chips and evaluation platforms in the lab, conducted extensive performance and conformance tests, and begun sampling the world's most powerful Ethernet switch chip in the world's most integrated Ethernet switch platform – all within two months, and on schedule.

The FocalPoint switches can be used to build a standard, low-cost 10-Gigabit Ethernet-based data center interconnect infrastructure with latency and performance comparable to the specialty interconnects such as Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and Myrinet. The devices complement the emerging low-latency Ethernet endpoints, which incorporate technologies such as TCP offload engines (ToE) and remote direct memory access (RDMA) to improve the performance of, and minimize the burden on, the hosts in the system.

Pricing and Availability

The US list price for the 24-port FM2224 is $450 in 5,000 unit quantities (less than $20 per port); the price for the FM2112 (which contains 8 10G ports and 16 1G ports) is $265 in 10,000 unit quantities. A fully-integrated 1U-high evaluation platform containing 24 10-Gigabit Ethernet CX4 interfaces is also available for rapid test and development.

About Fulcrum Microsystems

Founded in 2000, Fulcrum Microsystems Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company focused on developing interconnect switch chips for next-generation board and system designs. The company’s devices change the paradigm for interconnect, offering low latency, fine-grained flow control, and high throughput which combine to simplify board design and to build in more flexibility and higher performance. More information can be found at http://www.fulcrummicro.com