ANDOVER, Mass. -- Sandburst Corporation, a leadingprovider of silicon solutions for advanced packet systems, todayannounced the sampling of key components of Sandburst's secondgeneration HIBEAMâ chipset, marking another step in the market rolloutfor this advanced modular switching solution. Sandburst customers arecurrently sampling the integrated BME-3200/SE-4000 packet fabric, a highcapacity, non-blocking switch fabric chipset optimized for supportinghigh-capacity Ethernet and IP switching systems.

"The sampling of our second generation HIBEAM chipset by our customersreflects our growing market momentum," said Vince Graziani, SandburstCEO. "With the Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet markets poised forexpansion, our OEM customers need a switch fabric solution that providesthem with the necessary scale and quality of service characteristics todrive the next generation of applications across Ethernet and IPnetworks. Further, the delivery of the BME-3200/SE-4000 is anothermilestone for our world-class engineering organization and the cultureof execution that we are building within Sandburst."

The solution features several design breakthroughs and dramaticallyexpands the switching capacity from 320Gbps to 640Gbps with 100 Gbpssynchronous crossbar performance per chip. The unprecedented scalabilityand capacity expansion of the integrated BME-3200 /SE-4000 fabricincorporates a rich QoS feature set providing Sandburst's OEM customersthe key ingredients for powering advanced Ethernet and IP applicationswith assured performance and scalability in both enterprise and carrierenvironments.

The BME-3200/SE-4000's increased throughput and performance is coupledwith a unique mixed-mode of operation whereby a single device cansupport both arbitration and switching. The mixed mode functionalityenables OEM customer s to leverage the BME-3200/SE-4000 to support asingle-chip 40 Gbps switching solution. MetroBox, a recently announcedjoint development between Sandburst and Accton Technologies, uses theBME-3200/SE-4000 in this mode.

The BME-3200/SE-4000 integrates 40 high speed SERDES and embodiescrossbar functionality required by packet switching systems. SE-4000based fabric cards require half the space and consume half the power asthe first generation SE-1600. The SE-4000 scales linearly with thebandwidth requirements of the system allowing the designer to maximizeefficiency while using the minimum number of devices.

The HIBEAM architecture is a flexible chipset solution that can beincorporated into a broad range of system configurations. Like theprevious generation, the second-generation chipset is also beingdelivered as a complete system level solution including data planehardware, production ready software and a comprehensive support package.Sandburst's HIBEAM chipset architecture is an ideal solution for OEM'sseeking to meet the demands of network architects building the nextgeneration of packet switched networks.

Sandburst Corp.