Open-Silicon Enables Solarflare's Low Power 10Gb Ethernet Solutions

MILPITAS, Calif., Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Open-Silicon, Inc., a leading developer of custom ASICs and SoCs, announced today that Solarflare Communications, the leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) silicon, is using Open Silicon's PowerMAX(TM) technology in its second-generation SFC9020 Ethernet Controller with integrated 10Gb Ethernet PHY, which has been sampling to Tier1 server OEMs. This is the third generation of Solarflare silicon built by Open-Silicon, and the second designed using Open-Silicon's PowerMAX(TM) technology to optimize the silicon for low power.

Solarflare offers state-of-the-art 10GBASE-T performance with industry-leading low power, achieved by a best-in-class architecture, PHY integration, and Open-Silicon's PowerMAXTM technology. The SFC9000 family can be used in most 10GbE applications, including LAN-on-motherboard, embedded adapters, blade mezzanine cards, and PCIe adapters. Solarflare's product includes integrated SR-IOV, PCIe 2.0, and an integrated 10Gb SerDes requiring advanced 65nm design methodology to optimize the physical design for low power.

Open-Silicon's PowerMAX technology offers low-power design techniques like multi-voltage, multi-channel length, and multi-Vt design. In addition, Open-Silicon offers custom techniques like back biasing, transistor transformations, and power recovery. The combination of the best low-power EDA design flows with Open-Silicon's unique technologies allows building the best possible custom silicon.

"Solarflare's 10Gb Ethernet products address the industry need for network convergence by offering support for networking, iSCSI, and FCoE traffic through a common portal," said Danny Shamlou, senior vice president engineering of Solarflare. "Equally important is our focus on power efficiency. By partnering with Open-Silicon, we were able to build the lowest power solution in the industry, consuming less than half the power of the leading competitors' products."

"Open-Silicon offers a wide range of best-in-class engineering solutions to meet our customers' various needs," stated Dr. Naveed Sherwani, CEO and president of Open-Silicon. "Working with Solarflare has been a great experience and we are pleased that we have enabled them to set a new standard for low-power Ethernet solutions."
About Open-Silicon, Inc.
Open-Silicon, Inc. is a leading semiconductor company focused on setting new standards for predictable, reliable and flexible custom IC development. Open-Silicon provides leading-edge SoC design, proven open market IP integration and high-quality silicon manufacturing services to customers worldwide. Through the MAX Technologies, Open-Silicon continues to introduce technology advantages in the areas of low-power design, high-performance processor implementation, variability management, and low-cost test that help customers increase their market success. In 2008, Open-Silicon was recognized by the GSA as the Most Respected Private Semiconductor Company. For more information, visit Open-Silicon's website at www.open-silicon.com or call 408-240-5700.
About Solarflare Communications, Inc.
Solarflare Communications is a semiconductor company delivering the next level of high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). As the leading provider of standards-compliant 10GbE silicon, Solarflare's robust and power-efficient solutions are cost effective and easy to deploy. Ready for primetime, Solarflare 10GbE makes possible next-generation applications such cloud computing, server virtualization, network convergence and low-latency networking (with Open Onload(TM)) for market data applications. The privately held company is headquartered in Irvine, California, with a development center in Cambridge, UK, and has announced relationships with Accton, Citrix, CommScope, Delta Networks Inc., Panduit, SMC Networks and VMware.Source: Open-Silicon, Inc.