CAMARILLO, Calif. -- Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (Nasdaq:VTSS) today enhanced its industry leadership position in circuit switch technology with the release of the 11 Gbps, VSC3004 (quad) and VSC3008 (octal) asynchronous switches for high-speed serial backplanes and cable interconnects used in blade server, telecom, and networking equipment. With these devices, Vitesse nearly doubles the capacity of its performance-leading offering of circuit switches. The new devices enable next-generation backplanes to support the exponentially increasing demand for higher bandwidth and faster networking standards.

The VSC3004 and VSC3008 crosspoints are protocol transparent and provide the necessary switching and equalization performance to bring 10 Gbps backplanes to reality. In addition, extending link speed to 11 Gbps provides excess capacity to cover overhead such as robust encoding and encapsulation without sacrificing usable data bandwidth. Both devices feature Vitesse's industry recognized equalization technology for signal cleanup and enhanced system operating margin.

"The design challenges of reliable and high-integrity 10G backplanes have lead to many different approaches," said Bob Merritt, vice president, Semico Research Corp. "The Vitesse solution of combining a protocol-transparent crosspoint switch, plus the additional guardband provided by the 11 Gbps throughput and Vitesse's unique equalization technology definitely raises the competitive bar."

"The VSC3004 and VSC3008 crosspoints allow our customers to implement 10 Gbps backplanes today. This is a necessary tool and an enabling technology needed for migrating to next-generation protocols and standards," said Juan Garza, product marketing manager for Circuit Switch Products at Vitesse.

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp.