IMC Intros PCI Express Chips

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. -- IMC Semiconductor, formerly Internet Machines, has introduced a new family of PCI Express switch and bridge chips targeted at the high performance graphics and computing markets. Building on its proven switch technology, IMC Semiconductor will be among the first semiconductor manufacturers to deliver working silicon based on PCI Express, the next generation interconnect standard designed to greatly increase bandwidth for processor to I/O communication.

“We began development of PCI Express switches in 2002, which has allowed us to take a leadership position in the technology,” said Frank Knuettel, President and CEO, IMC Semiconductor. “We’re very excited to offer our customers the performance they’re demanding for their next generation systems. We’re enabling the early movers who want to accelerate their industry’s adoption of this new and exciting technology.”

“We have established an industry leading position in switch fabric design, having produced a single-chip switch capable of providing full-duplex switching throughput of 200 gigabits per second,” added Knuettel. “It’s notable that our single-chip switch includes 64 embedded SERDES transceivers and is scalable to terabit speeds. We are integrating this technology into our PCI Express switching products, and as a result are strongly positioned to pursue a market that has great growth potential.”

The first product of IMC’s new PCI Express switch family, the PES-48G, targets the high performance graphics market and will tapeout later this month. Customer silicon of this device will be available in June. IMC’s PCI Express switch family is rounded out with the PES-48S, which targets workstation and server markets and will be available in September, along with the PES-32S and PES-24S, which are designed for riser-card computing applications.

Initial pricing for the 48-lane PES-48G and PES-48S devices is targeted at $41.00 and $45.00 respectively, with the 32 lane PES 32S at $30.00 and the 24 lane PES-24S at $23.00. IMC will begin to support customer designs in March by offering design kits to a limited number of beta customers. The new IMC family of PCI Express chips is fully compliant with the 1.0a specification.

IMC Semiconductor Inc.