Austin, Texas - October 24, 2000 - Banderacom, Inc., an InfiniBand semiconductor start-up company, today announced IBandit, the industry's first InfiniBand semiconductor architecture and the foundation for a suite of high performance InfiniBand Channel Adapters.

IBandit is an InfiniBand Trade Association standards compliant semiconductor architecture incorporating a comprehensive set of standard features. IBandit single system-on-chip devices includes integrated SerDes, dual PCI/PCI-X interfaces, built-in PCI bridge and arbiters, and other integrated features that drastically reduce the time and cost of implementing complex multi-chip designs.

"Banderacom's IBandit incorporates a flexible and extensible set of features for a first-to-market architecture," said Vernon Turner, vice president, Global Enterprise Server Solutions at IDC. "Features such as 4x support, which were not expected to be available for another year or two, raises the bar for InfiniBand competitors who follow."

Flexible and future-proof, the IBandit architecture supports features you may need now and will certainly need soon such as 4X (10 Gigabit) links, PCI-X support, multiple virtual lanes, and large Maximum Transfer Units (MTU). The IBandit architecture was designed with extreme flexibility in mind, and can interface to the broadest variety of SCSI, Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, and other devices. Flexibility extends through the software which selectively bypasses transport acceleration hardware to accommodate future standards and interoperability requirements.

IBandit Features:
InfiniBand(IB) Media Access Controller (MAC) The MAC is core to using InfiniBand technology and Banderacom has incorporated four MACs, to handle high-speed traffic, data buffering, packet forming, flow control, error detection and management. The component is similar to other ATM and Ethernet protocols, yet it supports three virtual lanes (VLs) to ensure better utilization of bandwidth. Banderacom has increased its capabilities by adding an Integrated SerDes, which eliminates the need for expensive external components.

Transaction Switch
The core of the IBandit architecture, which creates the maximum amount of flexibility, is a protocol agnostic, wire-speed transaction switch. With an aggregate throughput in excess of 50 Gigabits per second, the transaction switch enables maximum flexibility for routing traffic between ports. Maximum sustained bandwidth is achieved utilizing 256 Kbytes of internal memory.

IBandit Protocol Engine
The integrated IBandit protocol engine hardware accelerates InfiniBand transport functions for a dramatic increase in the transport of the protocol. Additionally, Banderacom has incorporated a number of functions in the hardware, which include memory registration, partition keys, work queues and RDMA.

PCI/PCI-X bus
IBandit features two buses, with PCI/PCI-X compatible bus interfaces, for a flexible solution to server and processor connectivity. Each bus can operate at up to 133Mhz (the maximum allowed by the PCI-X standard) to support the full bandwidth potential of four 1x (or one 4x) InfiniBand connections. An integrated PCI/PCI-X bridge eliminates the need for expensive external components.

InfiniBand is an industry standards based interconnect technology that dramatically increases scalability, reliability, and flexibility of server and storage systems used in modern networks. Whereas today's storage and server networks require a multitude of different interconnect technologies including Gigabit Ethernet, Fiber Channel, SCSI, and PCI interconnect, ultimately InfiniBand can replace any or all of these within data centers providing a universal interconnect fabric enabling new, lower cost, higher performance, and more reliable networks that are not possible today.

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.

About Banderacom

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