SAN DIEGO -- Industry leader Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) (Nasdaq:AMCC) today announced the 10 Gigabit Columbia family of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Packet-over-SONET (POS) framers/mappers, delivering a platform approach to address line rates from OC-3 to OC-192 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet through a converged Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) System Packet Interface Level 4 Phase 2 (SPI-4.2). Primarily targeted to Multi-Service ATM/MPLS switches and edge routers, the Columbia family members have been engineered to maximize re-use of software and hardware design between different line card configurations, resulting in lowered development costs and improved time-to-market for system vendors. By integrating SONET/SDH transceivers at rates up to OC-48 (2.488 Gbps), the Columbia devices eliminate multiple discrete components and significantly simplify the routing of high-speed signals on the board, which translates into never before seen savings in space, power and costs. The Columbia product line utilizes .13um CMOS technology, making it the lowest power and most integrated offering of framers/mappers available today. It consists of three devices:

"Our customers are asked to deliver more compact systems, that consume less power and have more features than previous generations," said Ramakrishna P. Sudireddy, senior vice president of AMCC's Framer Products Division. "Building on the strength and success of our proven PHY and Framer technologies, AMCC continues to raise the integration bar with devices like the Columbia product line and enables its customers to meet these challenging objectives. Beyond that, our platform approach keeps R&D under control through maximized design re-use and allows our customer to deliver solutions earlier. Our customers win on all fronts." In a separate release: Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) (NASDAQ:AMCC) today announced the industry's first protocol-agnostic, 10 Gigabit architecture enabling hot-pluggable optics modules. This robust new architecture is made possible by the introduction of AMCC's COLUMBIA 192 (S19218), a combined 10 Gigabit Ethernet and OC-192 Packet-Over SONET (POS) framer/mapper that supports the Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) Framer Interface Level 4 Phase 2 (SFI-4.2), the Optical Internetworking Forum's (OIF) next-generation interface for 10 Gigabit-per-Second (Gbps) applications; and by the SuperPHY(TM) family member S19215 transceiver. Together, these devices allow for the development of hot-pluggable smaller form factor modules supporting 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and SONET/SDH with or without Forward Error Correction (FEC)/G.709 protocols, delivering significant savings in cost, power and size to customers. AMCC teamed up with industry-leading system and optical module vendors to actively establish the SFI-4.2 interface, facilitating the development and market availability of current and future generations of SFI-4.2 based modules. "One advantage of the SFI-4.2 interface is that it will support 10 Gbps protocol agnostic traffic over the same link with the same electronics," said Tina Ohlhaver, strategic marketing manager from Agilent Technologies. "As a result, customers can leverage the cost model of standard pluggable Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) modules such as X2 in SONET/SDH networks." "AMCC remains a strong and active advocate for the impact that standards bodies, such as the OIF, have had in the evolution of optical markets," said Brent Little, senior vice president of marketing for AMCC. "Our close working relationship with industry-leading vendors enabled us to play a valuable role in not only helping to establish the SFI-4.2 standard for 10 Gbps applications, but also in designing high-density, low-power and SFI-4.2 compliant framer and transceiver solutions that open the door for the adoption of small form factor pluggable modules in SONET/SDH networks." Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC)