Marvell Intros Switch Fabric

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Marvell(R) (NASDAQ: MRVL), a technology leader in the development of extreme broadband communications solutions, today announced that it has extended its Gigabit Ethernet switching leadership by offering the industry's highest performance, most integrated crossbar switch fabric. The Prestera(TM)-FX device, the newest addition to the Prestera family, integrates seventy-two 3.125 Gigabit per second (Gbps) serializer/deserializers (SERDES) on a single chip, and expands this market-leading switching solution into the enterprise core with a 288 Gbps switching performance. The Marvell Prestera-FX crossbar switch fabric leverages the Company's industry-leading Alaska(R) X 10 Gigabit physical layer (PHY) transceivers that are in mass production today. The Marvell Prestera-FX device includes high-density SERDES integration for greater system scalability and performance. For example, the Prestera-FX crossbar switch fabric enables the development of 12-blade chassis systems that scale up to 576 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports with 48 GbE port line cards for wiring closets, or 48 ports of 10 GbE for backbone connectivity. Used in conjunction with the Prestera fabric adapters and packet processors as well as the Alaska PHY transceivers, the Prestera-FX crossbar switch fabric provides advanced enterprise core features such as redundancy, hot-swap and centralized management capabilities. "As the enterprise core moves to a 10 Gigabit infrastructure, Marvell is enabling a fundamental shift from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet in the wiring closet," stated Gary Smerdon, Marvell's Vice President of Marketing for the Communications Business Group. "Just as Gigabit Ethernet has emerged in desktop LANs, more bandwidth is required for aggregation chassis applications as well as 10 Gigabit backbone connections. The Marvell Prestera-FX crossbar device will play a key role in the development of next-generation wiring closet and backbone chassis switching solutions." Marvell Technology Group Ltd.