High speed memory chip interface high-flyer Rambus Inc has teamed up with Berkeley Networks Inc on a co-operative effort to deliver high-performance, high-capacity packet memory technologies for next-generation multi-gigabit network switches. Berkeley a privately held company less than two years old, and based in Miltpitas, California, uses Rambus’ memory interface technology in its new exponeNT family of integrated network services switches, to provide packet buffering capacity it claims is more than ten times the industry average, with support for up to 96- gigabits-per-second I/O bandwidth. The ExponeNT switches were launched in January, providing over a megabyte of buffering per Fast Ethernet port and over 10 megabytes of buffering per Gigabit Ethernet port. Such large amounts of packet buffering results in significantly enhanced switch performance says the company. ExponeNT switches use Microsoft Corp’s Windows NT as the network operating system, the first time, says Berkeley, it has been used on a high-performance intelligent switch platform, an approach it says reduces both cost and complexity (CI No 3,293). A set of custom ASICs called eCore handle all the packet switching, processing and forwarding, while network management and control functions are caried out by NT on standard Intel processors. The Rambus channel interface technology transfers data at speeds approaching 700- megabits-per-second-per-pin. Rambus, based in Mountain View, California, says that eight of the world’s top semiconductor companies currently license its technology, which is being shipped by seven of the world’s top PC makers.
