Contact:

Michele Ostrowski ITOX Applied Computing 888-200-ITOX, Ext. 6101

Bree Clidence or Rebecca Hovey Stauch Vetromile & Mitchell 401-438-0614 bree@svmpr.com or rebecca@svmpr.com

StarGen's StarFabric Design Utilized in New ITOX PC System Featuring 42 Expansion Card Slots

ITOX to Exhibit New Solution at This Week's COMDEX

Las Vegas, Nevada - November 12, 2001 - ITOX® Applied Computing, a leading developer and manufacturer of Intel® based applied computing platforms for industrial and telecommunications applications, today announced that it is exhibiting a new PC system with 42 expansion slots, which incorporates design from StarGen™ Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, at this week's COMDEX Fall 2001. The system is an example of its Star Cluster concept, based on StarGen's advanced StarFabric switch products.

Although the system is designed to be enclosed in three rack-mounted chasses that can be up to five meters apart, it functions as a single PC with common PCI and H.100 buses. The H.100 bus, which is supported as an option, is used extensively in the telecommunications industry. The system operates as a standard Intel architecture PC and utilizes the standard PCI card addressing built into the operating system to provide 42 card slots with no impact on BIOS, the operating system, drivers or application software. This feature eliminates the need for special drivers and complex software integration. The system displayed at COMDEX features the ITOX3 revision-controlled motherboard, six ISA slots and 36 PCI slots. The system is only one example of the Star Cluster concept, which can be expanded to support over a thousand expansion cards and multiple processing clusters. Shipments will begin in the first quarter of 2002.

"The Star Cluster concept makes possible a level of scalability and compatibility with existing systems that cannot be achieved by extending current hardware architectures," said ITOX Senior Vice President John Matlock. "Star Cluster offers this range of scalability, and does it in a way that enables users to add onto, rather than replace, existing hardware. In addition, users do not have to buy expansion capability up-front. In fact, the Star Cluster concept provides advantages in compatibility and non-obsolescence of existing hardware, operating system transparency, system scalability, performance, system availability, and cost that just aren't possible with other architectures."

The Star Cluster concept has major implications for existing PC systems that need to be expanded but do not have additional expansion slots. The system uses an ITOX StarCard that fits into one of the standard PCI expansion slots in a typical Intel architecture PC. A second StarCard is placed in a passive backplane chassis that will contain expansion cards in excess of those that will fit into the existing PC. The two StarCards are then connected through an ITOX StarSwitch with standard Cat 5 LAN cables. Data is transferred across the StarMatrix in full duplex at speeds up to 2.5 Gbps in each direction, and cables may be up to 5 meters in length. The PCI and H.100 buses are replicated in each chassis and the expansion cards are automatically recognized by the operating system as if they were physically located on the same motherboard. Each StarSwitch can interconnect up to six PCI resources, three PCI/H.100 resources or other StarSwitches. StarSwitches may be cascaded up to 7 levels deep to provide a broad range of system topologies providing redundant paths for fault tolerance as well as system expansion.

"ITOX's selection of our technology demonstrates StarFabric's applicability in a wide variety of deployment possibilities," said Tracy Richardson, co-founder and president of StarGen, Inc. "ITOX customers can reap the benefits of StarFabric design in terms of flexibility of system configurations and scalability of independent I/O and processing capabilities."

ITOX will be demonstrating this new solution at DFI's booth, L3621-120TW at COMDEX Fall 2001, the global IT marketplace. COMDEX Fall 2001 is a Key3Media event and takes place November 12-16, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas Hilton and the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information, please visit www.key3media.com.

About StarGen

StarGen (www.StarGen.com) is a fabless semiconductor company that is developing new switch fabric interconnect technology for the communications industry. The technology will benefit vendors of carrier and enterprise communication platforms for next generation voice, data, and video networks. Early adopters will include those building open standards based access/edge equipment such as Voice over Network gateways, DSLAMS, wireless base stations, cable headend systems, edge routers, and remote access concentrators. StarGen's technology will provide a dramatic increase in equipment scalability, reliability, and Quality of Service, while providing for the retention of existing standards-based hardware and software investment. Founded in February 1999, StarGen is funded by a group of prestigious venture capital companies, including Morgenthaler Ventures (www.morgenthaler.com), St. Paul Venture Capital (www.stpaulvc.com), Commonwealth Capital Ventures (www.ccvlp.com) and Bessemer Venture Partners (www.bessemervp.com). StarGen is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

About ITOX
ITOX (www.itox.com) is a leading developer and manufacturer of applied computer platforms for computer telephony applications, and is certified to ISO 9001 standards. It is a major supplier of PC computer platforms used in light industrial environments for server appliances, voice messaging, telecommunications, data acquisition, medical electronics, industrial control and security monitoring systems. ITOX is affiliated with DFI®, one of the world's top ten manufacturers of PC motherboards. Additional information about ITOX and the Star Cluster products are available on the ITOX web site.

Block Diagram of ITOX PC System with 42 Expansion Card Slots

ITOX utilizes StarGen's StarFabric technology to build their new PC system with 42 expansion slots. Six ISA slots are provided directly on the ITOX3 motherboard and an additional 18 PCI slots are provided on each of the PX-20S passive backplanes. The entire system functions as a single PC and the expansion cards are automatically recognized by the operating system as if they were physically located on the same motherboard.