Montego is ideally suited to scale from access and metro-edge to metro-core and long-haul markets for carrier class products such as access concentrators; voice, wireless and xDSL gateways; multi-service switches and routers; cable head ends and intelligent optical (DWDM, SONET) transport equipment. Montego enables network systems OEMs to build next generation equipment that meets the carriers' needs for guaranteed performance levels with support for both legacy and emerging protocols.

Village Networks (Eatontown, NJ) is one of the many companies who have selected Bay's solution. "We evaluated ten incumbent and start up network processor vendors for our forthcoming 10 Gbps solutions," said Jon Anderson, Vice President of Engineering at Village Networks. "Our evaluation looked at many factors including processing performance, packet forwarding, traffic management flexibility, peripheral chip count, and ease of use; in all cases Bay's Montego processor was the clear-cut winner."

"With so many companies making so many promises, a vendor with working 10Gbps silicon really stands out. Bay is the first company to deliver a single chip network processor and traffic manager at this speed level," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst, The Linley Group. "With this impressive combination of high performance and integration, Montego is getting lots of attention from equipment makers."

"At Bay Microsystems, we are challenging the status quo in network processing," said Chuck Gershman, a co-founder and Sr. Vice President of Bay Microsystems. "With our deterministic architecture that guarantees line rate operation, we will once again legitimize the network processor as an enabling technology." Bay co-founders Man Trinh (Chief Architect) and Tony Chiang (V.P. of Engineering) added, "With Montego, we've developed and implemented a technology that not only satisfies current market requirements but also builds a foundation for a family of products that could span a multitude of applications that this industry segment demands."

The key to Montego's performance is its deterministic pipeline architecture. Montego achieves guaranteed sustainable packet processing of 31.25 million packets per second regardless of traffic patterns or networks services, while supporting data throughput of up to 16 Gbps. In order to guarantee a line rate at minimum packet size, a deterministic processor engine is required. Most 2.5 Gbps (OC48) class network processors available on the market today are based on parallel, multi-threaded RISC architectures, which are not deterministic and therefore cannot guarantee sustained line rate performance.

The deterministic pipeline architecture also enables the functional integration of an OC-192c/10G network processor and traffic manager in a single chip solution. Designed with a 0.18 micron CMOS process, Montego dramatically reduces chip count and associated power for today's highest performance carrier class applications from access to long haul.

For applications that require 'high touch' processing, Montego's programmable AnyMapping^TM capability supports line rate transformation and forwarding of any legacy protocol such as Sonet, ATM, Ethernet, IPv4 and Frame Relay and any proprietary or emerging protocols such as MPLS and IPv6.

To support its customers design efforts, Bay has also introduced a robust simulation and emulation design environment as well as a complete system reference design. Called the Internetworking Development System (IDS), the Java GUI-based design environment not only provides a complete device level-programming tool, but also enables system emulation, simulation and debug. In addition, the complete application development environment includes NEXTware^TM (Network Engine XTension software suite), a cycle/pipeline accurate simulator, performance and functional analysis tools and application library modules.

Montego is priced below $1,200 each in volume quantities. Sample quantities are available now and production quantities will be available in the third quarter of this year. Montego is packaged in a 1600 pin BGA epoxy flip chip and operates at 166 MHz.

Bay Microsystems Inc. is a privately held, fabless communication IC company. Bay's Internetworking Processor^TM (InP) Family of programmable packet processing devices combines scalability, intelligence processing and ultra-high performance in highly integrated solutions. These devices are ideally suited to scale from "Access to Long Haul" for carrier class products such as access concentrators, voice, wireless and xDSL gateways, multi-service switches and routers, cable head ends and intelligent optical (DWDM, Sonet) transport equipment, deployed within the metro-edge, metro-core, regional and long-haul markets. The InP Family includes the industry's first single chip OC-192c/10G Network Processor and Traffic Manager with switching.

Bay's highly experienced management and world-class engineering team have three generations of proven expertise in architecture, implementation, deployment, marketing and management of network processors. Bay Microsystems is a member of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), Network Processor Forum (NPF), MPLS and ATM forums and actively participates in the IETF. For more information visit the website at www.baymicrosystems.com.

Bay Microsystems, Internetworking Processor, Montego, NEXTware and AnyMapping are trademarks of Bay Microsystems. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.