Marvell Jumps Into PON

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced the first member of the AVANTA(TM) family of broadband optical access solutions for Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON), Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) and 10Gigabit EPON. This new family of broadband solutions offers up to 20 times the bandwidth of traditional copper-based networking solutions. The first members of the AVANTA family are single-chip for Single-Family-Unit (SFU) devices, with unprecedented levels of integration, performance and a radically reduced energy footprint, providing optimal solutions for mass-deployment of next generation video-centric and interactive Internet.

The "pipe" into the home sets the bar for the consumer experience for home entertainment, productivity and communications. Optical Access provides the technology leap to enable high broadband throughput ranging from 100Mbps to 2.5Gbps per home overcoming the current limitations with copper-wired infrastructure. This expanded throughput is necessary for streaming 3D High Definition content in real time as well as user-to-user and user to cloud interactive applications. Worldwide demand for optical access is expected to grow 250% in 2010.(1)

"Consumers worldwide have a growing appetite for media-rich entertainment such as IPTV, interactive video, and multiplayer games. For these applications, PON offers much more bandwidth than DSL copper technology," said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "Marvell's new EPON and GPON products can play an important role in the replacement of DSL in North America and enable households in countries such as India and China to take advantage of huge amounts of bandwidth with their first broadband installation."

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (Nasdaq: MRVL)