Patent-Pending Device is Industry's Lowest Power Network Processor; 75 Man Years of Bundled Software Reduces System Development Time
Mountain View, Calif., August 7, 2006 -- Storm Semiconductor, Inc. today announced the Gemini family of network processors that includes the SL3518, which is the industry's first dual-CPU Network Processor with integrated peripherals. The family packs the processing power and integration needed to design systems that can manage the high-speed data and video that are streaming through fiber connections into homes and small businesses (i.e., SOHO/SMB markets) at speeds of 100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s.
The patent-pending SL3518 provides 800 MIPS (400 MIPS per CPU) of 32-bit processing power with a dual-bus architecture that allows engineers to design Internet Protocol Set Top boxes, Voice over Internet Protocol Gateways, Media Servers with RAID, Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Gigabit Router Gateways. Each device in the Gemini family comes with application software that speeds development and shortens time to market.
According to Dr. Stewart Wu, President and CEO of Storm Semiconductor, Inc., "The home and small businesses now need systems that were once used exclusively in large enterprises. With fiber optic links now coming to the neighborhood and directly into the home, the Internet is becoming a fountain of data with rates that are capable of reaching 100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s per household. These massive multimedia data streams contain television video, radio programs, digital photographs, digital books and telephone conversations. The volume of data is now reaching the point where a home-router gateway is needed to store and distribute these vast amounts of data among the many computers that reside in the home.
"Enterprise technology such as RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) is now needed to protect home mass storage which holds precious digital data such as family photographs and videos. Making this enterprise technology priced for homes and small business has required a major step in both integration and software development. Our seasoned team of semiconductor and software engineers has met this challenge by packing the processing power and functions into a chip along with the protocol software which eliminates a major cost in system design."
The SL3518 is a mixed-signal device that represents a major milestone in the design of Systems-on-Chip (SOC) by integrating functions such as a TV controller, dual Gigabit Media Access Controllers, dual USB 2.0 interfaces, PCI interface, dual IDE (PATA and SATA) hard-drive controllers, DDR memory controller and a proprietary NetEngine(TM) TCP/IP protocol accelerator. The device improves system reliability and eliminates the need for a fan by consuming only 1.5 Watt.
Availability and Price
The dual-CPU SL3518 is sampling now with full production in September. The device is priced at $19 in a 400-pin, FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array) in quantities of 10,000.
The single-CPU SL3516 is sampling now with full production in September. The device is priced at $17 in a 400-pin, FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array) in quantities of 10,000.
The SL3512 which is also a single-CPU with reduced peripherals targeted for router gateway and Network Attached Storage applications. It is sampling now with full production in September. The device is priced at $14 in a 324-pin, FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array) in quantities of 10,000.
About Storm Semiconductor, Inc.
Storm Semiconductor, Inc. is an emerging leader in embedded network processing, multimedia content transport, and storage solutions for both enterprise and home networks. Storm delivers easy to use, cost effective broadband communication and network solutions covering NAS, secured VoIP, media server and gateway, dual band WiFi AP, WiFi mesh network, and integrated EPON CPE. Storm is also the leading provider of system-on-a-chip, gigabit switches and transceivers, and software solutions such as consumer network QoS, and hardware acceleration engine. For more information please visit www.stormsemi.com.
Gemini, NetEngine, CentriNAS, CentriMedia, Centroid are trademarks of Storm Semiconductor, Inc.
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