EZChip Supplies Customers With Samples Of Its New NPA Offering

EZChip recently announced that it is providing its customers with samples of its latest offering NPA (News - Alert), a new generation of network processors which are meant for Ethernet access applications.

Customers can choose from NPA network processors of varying combinations, including 1-Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and these provide a total throughput of 10 Gigabit with minimum power dissipation between 6 and 10 watts and priced affordably at under $100.

The performance programmable solution for access nodes supplied via NPA is the best by current standards; this it provides with top-of-the-line integration, minimum power dissipation and at an affordable price tag (News - Alert). Several Tier 1 vendors have already adapted EZChip in a wide variety of solutions.

The NPA is a smaller and more compact version of the high speed network processors or NPUs from the same company. With the NPA EZChip brings high performance Carrier Ethernet applications to the access market.

The NPA also works well with the high speed network processors from EZChip. By introducing the NPA to its roster of products EZChip now provides network equipment vendors with a similar architecture; this enables them to recycle their designs with every change in edge, metro and access systems. EZChip will also be supplying a production level code which can be used for a broad array of applications and will further enhance the utility of the NPA and enable faster development processes.

The NPA is being produced via a 90 nanometer silicon process and can be ordered in lead or lead free packages, suitable for commercial or industrial temperature grades. It is currently being offered in three different models, differentiated on the basis of software compliance. The NPA-1 is for eight 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the NPA-2 for sixteen 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports and the NPA-3 which can be configured to suit a combination of either 4 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports or permutations of 10-Gigabit and 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The NPA incorporates several qualities like programmable packet processing, traffic managers, operations, administration and maintenance processing offloading, synchronous ethernet and IEEE (News - Alert) offloading, an integrated TCAM and an on-chip Fabric Interface Controller. The company expects the product to find utility in such widespread carrier applications like GPON/EPON aggregation nodes, access routers, segregating Ethernet, providing high speed access for VDSL aggregation nodes.