Banderacom Receives Intel Investment Concluding First Round of Funding


Austin, Texas - August 20, 2000 - Banderacom (formerly INH Semiconductor), an InfiniBand™ semiconductor start-up company, today announced it has received an investment from Intel Capital. This completes Banderacom's first round of funding, which totals $9 million, enabling Banderacom to accelerate development and deployment of InfiniBand products.

"More than 160 networking, storage and server systems manufacturers have joined forces behind InfiniBand architecture and through the InfiniBand Trade Association, creating a potentially huge market and opportunity for Banderacom," said Eric Johnson, president and CEO of Banderacom. "Working with Intel and key customers will enable us to offer early-to-market products that are flexible, interoperable and have high performance."

"Intel is committed to delivering a broad range of interoperable silicon building blocks for InfiniBand architecture," said Tom Macdonald, director and General Manager of Intel's Fabric Components Division. "In addition, Intel is working with the industry to ensure that a broad range of InfiniBand technology products are available and aligned with Intel architecture platforms. Banderacom's focus on target channel adapters (the devices that connect storage, LAN, and peripheral devices to InfiniBand servers), will help give IHV's (Internet hardware vendors) a range of options from which to choose when building timely solutions based on InfiniBand architecture."

"Intel appears to be putting the necessary elements in place to drive the widespread acceptance of InfiniBand technology," said Gordon Haff, research director for Intel Architectures at the Aberdeen Group. "Their funding of Banderacom to develop early InfiniBand silicon is another step toward achieving the critical mass necessary for the success of this initiative going forward."

"Austin Ventures is especially interested in companies pioneering technologies that solve Internet infrastructure bandwidth bottlenecks," said Stephen Straus, partner at Austin Ventures and member of the board of directors of Banderacom. "We consider hundreds of start-up opportunities each year and ultimately invest in only a handful, like Banderacom, that have unique, sustainable solutions applicable to a broad market, and can get those solutions to market early."

The company's new name, Banderacom, reflects its "flagship" positioning with InfiniBand communications semiconductors. While Banderacom is based in Austin, Texas, bandera, meaning flag in Spanish, is also the name of another Texas city.

Servers currently require a multitude of different interconnect technologies including Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SCSI, and proprietary clustering interconnects, connected via a shared bus. InfiniBand architecture creates a unified fabric for storage, networking and clustering leading simple connectivity, improved bandwidth, enhanced interoperability features and greater reliability.

The InfiniBand Trade Association is an industry trade organization dedicated to developing and promoting the InfiniBand architecture. More information about the InfiniBand Trade Association and specifications can be found at www.infinibandta.org. Initial participants of the first round of funding included Austin Ventures, Jato Tech Ventures and systems manufacturer Crossroads Systems.

About Banderacom

Banderacom is a privately held, fabless semiconductor company located in Austin, Texas, focused on dramatically increasing the performance, scalability, reliability, flexibility, and time-to-market of networking, storage, and server system manufacturer's products by providing flexible, interoperable, high performance semiconductors based on the InfiniBand specifications.

Banderacom was founded by a veteran team from the microprocessor and communications semiconductor industries in 1999, and has received funding from Austin Ventures, Crossroads Systems, Intel Corporation, and Jato Tech Ventures.

Banderacom is a member of InfiniBand Trade Association.

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