ENGINEERING

SAN JOSE, CA -- Agere Systems (NYSE:AGR.A), a world leader in communications components, today announced availability of the latest version of its PayloadPlus(TM) software development environment (SDE). The PayloadPlus SDE 3.0 features OC-192c/10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) simulation support and enhanced debugging capabilities. It is designed to help customers quickly design, evaluate and debug PayloadPlus-based application programs and speed time-to-market. The new SDE, which is targeted to network system builders who develop or evaluate wire-speed packet/cell processing software, provides code compatibility from OC-12 through OC-192c/10 GbE speeds and beyond. "Agere Systems' PayloadPlus SDE 3.0 builds on the company's leadership in network processor programming tools," said Ford Tamer, vice president of the processing, aggregation and switching group at Agere Systems. "We were the first to market an OC-48c multi-protocol network processor. Now, we are one of the first to bring a complete software-compatible 10-gigabit processing solution to market. This represents significant time-to-market advantages for our customers." The new SDE speeds the development of Functional Programming Language (FPL) and Agere Scripting Language (ASL) scripts for Agere's PayloadPlus family of network processors. With its high-level FPL and ASL languages for OC-48c and 10-gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s) network processors, associated application programming interfaces (APIs) and XML-based hardware/software environment configuration, the SDE will enable faster development cycles, easier software maintenance and evolution and lower lifetime system costs. "Because of its use of high-level FPL, Agere's SDE enables their 10 gigabit-per-second PayloadPlus network processor to offer a significant level of software scalability, compatibility with previous network processors, and ease-of-use," said Dr. Ramesh Rao, analyst for RHK, a South San Francisco-based research firm. The Agere PayloadPlus architecture achieves over five times improvement in performance versus that of advanced RISC processors. "Agere's customers are able to realize these performance gains while using less overhead, fewer clock cycles, and higher levels of data processing per clock cycle than augmented RISC-based solutions," asserted Tamer. As a result, PayloadPlus is capable of supporting speeds of OC-192c/10 GbE and higher, while maintaining the flexibility and programmability of traditional RISC-based machines. "Because PayLoadPlus application software does not contain low-level chip set architecture details, it can deliver full performance. Customers can easily leverage their software investment across multiple speeds and generations of PayLoadPlus chip sets without tedious recoding or reoptimization," Tamer said. Agere's FPL is a high-level language that offers dramatic code reduction, with each line roughly equivalent to 10 to 20 lines of C code. The FPL compiler is used in conjunction with Agere's Fast Pattern Processor (FPP) and/or NP10 network processor for reassembling and classifying incoming protocol data units (PDUs). Included in Agere's SDE is an FPL compiler with enhanced debugger, an Agere ASL compiler, PayloadPlus chip set simulators, a traffic generator, Agere API software, an enhanced graphical interface, and associated utilities. The XML-based hardware and software configuration environment allows customers to add and configure custom chips and logic along with the Agere Payload Plus network processing solution. The ASL compiler is coupled with Agere's Routing Switch Processor (RSP), Agere System Interface (ASI), and/or NP10/TM10 traffic manager devices, for policing, statistics, packet modification, and traffic management. The traffic generator utility produces simulated traffic files for the simulator. The Agere API provides low-level run-time access to the PayloadPlus chip set. Scripts and models developed on the SDE are compatible with all announced PayloadPlus chip sets and are expected to be compatible with follow-on generations of Agere's PayloadPlus network processor family. The graphical interface configures application parameters and runs the compilers, simulators and utilities. The PayloadPlus SDE 3.0 supports the Windows NT, Red Hat, Linux, and Solaris environments. Available now, the PayloadPlus SDE 3.0 is part of a comprehensive development environment that covers both hardware and software components. This includes OC48c through OC-192c/10 GbE hardware development platforms (2.5 Gbit/s through 10 Gbit/s). Pricing is dependent upon final configuration. For more information visit www.agere.com