RocketChips Introduces Gigabit Speed CMOS Transceivers for Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet Applications - Rc13110, Rc12110 - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, August 9, 1999

RocketChips, Inc. ( http://www.rocketchips.com ) a leading silicon-CMOS designer of high speed, high performance analog, RF (radio frequency) and mixed-signal intellectual property (IP) cores, Tuesday announced the availability of two new transceivers for industry standard applications: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BaseX) and Fibre Channel. These CMOS transceiver cores are available as licensable IP for fabrication at pure play foundries and in customer proprietary processes. RocketChips believes it is the first IP provider to offer these gigabit speed transceivers as licensable intellectual property for both pure play foundries and captive fabs.

The silicon-proven transceiver cores utilize an innovative, patent-pending architecture that was developed by RocketChips to meet the industry specifications for Gigabit Ethernet IEEE 802.3z and Fibre Channel ANSI X3T11. The cores can be fabricated as fully functional standard products or integrated for use in ASICs and other highly integrated devices.

The Gigabit Ethernet transceiver, the RC13110, operates at 1.25Gbps over fiber. The Fibre Channel transceiver, the RC12110, provides data transmission rates of 1.0625Gbps. The two transceivers are immediately available for sampling in RocketChips' Gigabit Transceiver Evaluation Board.

"Our demonstration of fully functional gigabit-speed silicon, in both a test bench environment and in a full network application, is a major step to bringing these transceiver IP cores to the market," stated Dr. Scott Irwin, RocketChips Vice President of Engineering. "These successful demonstrations provide validation of our technology as we continue to accelerate CMOS transceiver development for Gigabit Ethernet over copper, 2X Fibre Channel and 2.5Gbps serial links."

RocketChips, Inc. is a silicon-CMOS designer of high speed, high performance analog, RF and mixed-signal integrated circuits and related IP for the wired and wireless communication markets. The Company licenses its reusable IP components (under the trademark "RocketIP") for use in the creation of advanced Systems-on-a-Chip and other complex integrated circuits and systems addressing a wide range of applications in the communication markets. RocketChips is headquartered in Minneapolis and maintains additional IC design centers in Ames, Iowa, and Austin, Texas.