Dune Networks Announces Availability of SPAUI Implementation on Altera FPGAs

Dune Partnered With Altera to Release the FPGA-based SPAUI Code Enabling OEM Vendors to Implement Highly Dense 10Gbps Systems

SUNNYVALE, Calif.-- August 29, 2007 -- Dune Networks, a leading provider of networking devices for Data Center, Enterprise and Carrier Ethernet platforms today announced the availability of SPAUI code for Altera Corporation’s Stratix II GX FPGAs. The two companies worked closely together to ensure SPAUI interoperability between Dune’s Next Generation devices and Altera’s Stratix II GX FPGA family with embedded multi-gigabit transceivers.

SPAUI, an interface based on the XAUI industry standard, incorporates several extensions to support dense 10Gbps level applications with speedup, for accommodating such factors as packet headers, full rate 12GE and in-band flow control.

“Since FPGAs have always been at the forefront of interface transitions, the SPAUI definition has inherent flexibility to take advantage of an FPGA based implementation,” said Eyal Dagan Dune’s CEO., “Altera’s Stratix II GX FPGA devices support SPAUI today with no changes and with minimal logic requirements at both 3.125Gbps and 6.25Gbps.”

“The flexibility, simplicity and robustness of SPAUI make it an ideal interface for dense 10Gbps level networking applications,” said Arun Iyengar, senior director of Altera's communications business unit. “Our close collaboration with Dune allows designers to quickly take advantage of the SPAUI interface in their systems.”

The Altera-based, SPAUI implementation is available at both multiples of 3.125 Gbps and 6.25 Gbps speeds and enables flexible bundling to create higher speed links.

The SPAUI memorandum and FPGA implementation are now available upon demand from Dune Networks.

About Altera’s Stratix II GX

The Stratix II GX families provide the ideal platform for developing high-speed solutions for networking equipment. Stratix II GX devices deliver up to 20 full-duplex high-performance multi-gigabit transceivers. These transceivers deliver excellent jitter performance across the full 600 Mbps to 6.375 Gbps range and when used with the multiple levels of dynamic pre-emphasis and equalization circuits in the FPGA, provide a low risk design path for new system designs.

About SPAUI

SPAUI combines the benefits of both XAUI and SPI4.2 standards into a single SERDES-based interface supporting MAC/Framer, NPU and Traffic Management interconnection requirements.

The interface extends the XAUI interface by introducing channelization, packet interleaving, and refined flow control. SPAUI is implementation-friendly, supported easily by SERDES- based FPGA devices, and is backward compatible to the standard XAUI.

The flexibility, simplicity and robustness of SPAUI make it an ideal interface for dense 10Gbps networking applications. Any vendor implementing XAUI can easily support SPAUI, foregoing the need for special encoding or any other major change in silicon.

ABOUT DUNE NETWORKS

Dune Networks (www.dunenetworks.com) is a leading semiconductor supplier of networking devices that facilitate building Data Center, Enterprise and Carrier Ethernet Solutions. The company’s products are scalable in system capacity, port rate and service scheme, offering a standard compliant, highly integrated and resilient architecture. Founded in 2000, Dune’s headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California with an R&D center in the Europark Industrial Park at Yakum, Israel.