ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A, AGR.B) today announced six semiconductor chips that dramatically improve the capacity, size, total system costs, and product delivery schedules of existing and next-generation wireless and wireline telecommunications equipment. These six innovative chips catalyze the extremely cost conscious telecom equipment market with new revenue-generating opportunities. In addition, these chips can enable consumers to rapidly receive higher bandwidth, higher quality, and faster wireless phones, personal and desktop computer, and other communications services at much lower costs. The chips will be shown at the SUPERCOMM show (Agere Booth #21246) in Atlanta June 3-5.
The six chips, APP550TM (5 Gbits/s), APP530TM (2.5 Gbits/s), TAAD Lite, TAAD UltraLite, SAR-1K and SAR-500, perform various crucial communications functions with voice, data, and video signals, including traffic management** (TM), segmentation and reassembly (SAR), and Asynchronous Transfer Mode*** (ATM).
Two of the six new chips, APP550TM and APP530TM, perform TM, SAR, ATM, voice and data packet processing; operations, administration and maintenance; traffic policing; traffic shaping; buffer management; and data modification capabilities. The two chips enable telecom service providers to individually serve eight times more types of telecom traffic to their customers--at nearly half the price of competing chips. The APP550TM is the world's first to integrate TM, ATM, SAR, and Ethernet Media Access Controller (MACs) on a single device running at 5 gigabits per second (Gbits/s).
Competing technologies need at least two chips, including a separate Ethernet data communications chip, to perform all these functions. Agere's solution could provide millions of dollars of savings for both equipment manufacturers and telecom service providers, because higher performance can be consolidated into half as many chips and smaller, less expensive pieces of equipment. These two chips are targeted for network equipment that connects Internet, access networks, as well as digital subscriber line and cable modems to the telecom service providers' backbone infrastructures.
"Agere's APP550TM and APP530TM products are formidable competitors for two major reasons: Because of the low price, and because they will allow customers to add multi-service functions to their existing solutions, thereby accelerating their product deliveries and preserving their software investments," said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst with The Linley Group, a research company. "Agere's solution will appeal particularly to equipment manufacturers who need to add traffic management, SAR, and ATM functions to their existing products. This product reinforces Agere's position as a premier provider of ATM and traffic management technologies."
The APP550TM and APP530TM chips feature eight times the shaping capacity than the nearest contending chips. The higher number of shapers allows more granular management and control over voice, data and video traffic signals. This function enables telecom service providers to deliver higher value services to their highest paying customers first, which increases their revenues. Agere's APP550TM and APP530TM are priced at $575 and $295 in quantities of 10,000.
The TAAD Lite and TAAD UltraLite chips each integrate 12 chips into one*, making them the world's most integrated for the applications they target, which include third-generation wireless base stations and digital subscriber line access multiplexers. Competing offerings require at least 12 chips to do what each of the two Agere chips can do in one. This unmatched integration dramatically shrinks the size of telecom equipment, thereby reducing total system costs, simplifying product design, improving equipment reliability, and accelerating product deliveries. The chips are less than one square inch in size and house approximately 140 million transistors, squeezing huge amounts of performance and transistors by industry standards into a small space.
Two other new chips, SAR-1K and SAR-500, perform SAR functions and, like the TAAD Lite and TAAD UltraLite, target third-generation (3G) wireless base stations and digital subscriber line access multiplexers. Combined, the TAAD Lite and new SAR-1K chips enable 1,000 simultaneous user channels of voice, data, or video signals--twice the bandwidth of the nearest competing chip. Combined, the TAAD Lite, TAAD UltraLite, SAR-1K and SAR-500 reduce overall telecom line card equipment system costs by more than 40 percent. The four chips are available now and range in price from $125 to $300 in quantities of 10,000.
Agere Systems