StarGen to Develop StarFabric-To-PCI Express Bridge

Complementary Portfolio of Advanced Switching for PCI Express Bridges and Switches to Follow Starting in 2004

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, SAN JOSE, CA - September 9, 2002 - StarGen, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, today announced plans to develop a StarFabric-to-PCI Express™ bridge product as well as a portfolio of Advanced Switching for PCI Express™ bridge and switch products for delivery in 2004. StarGen developed the StarFabric architecture to address the needs of embedded systems designers who require highly scalable and highly available systems. StarFabric is a backplane and chassis-to-chassis interconnect that is cost effective, easy to implement, and compatible with existing bus-based architectures. The StarFabric-to-PCI Express bridge device will enable system designers to quickly incorporate PCI Express processor subsystems into scalable StarFabric based designs.

In a recent announcement, the StarFabric Trade Association disclosed plans to ensure a seamless evolution from the StarFabric architecture to the emerging Advanced Switching specification for PCI Express. StarFabric incorporates today many of the features and capabilities that are shared with the Advanced Switching specification currently being developed and is targeted at providing a PCI compatible, highly scalable, switched interconnect solution for communication applications.

"StarGen is an active member of a strong ecosystem and an important contributor to developing the Advanced Switching specification," said Tim Parker, director of Strategic Planning and Technology Initiatives for Intel Communications Group. "Using the expertise gained through development of StarFabric, StarGen is helping provide the industry with a general-purpose interconnect, offering the performance and standards-based economics to support feature-rich, cost-efficient communications solutions for the next decade."

StarGen is currently shipping several StarFabric devices including a 6 port, 30Gbps switch and a StarFabric-to-PCI bridge. These devices are currently designed into a broad set of applications across diverse market segments. StarGen is also developing a line of additional StarFabric devices for communication and distributed embedded processing with a range of interfaces including TDM, Utopia, and POS. Starting in 2003, StarGen will begin delivering PCI Express devices starting with the StarFabric-to-PCI Express bridge. In 2004, a portfolio of Advanced Switching for PCI Express-based devices, including switches and bridges, will also start rolling out that will provide all of the features of StarFabric with the addition of access to link bandwidths of 10Gbps and more.

"As experts in developing this type of technology, we are pleased to be able to contribute our expertise and experience to the development of the PCI Express Advanced Switching specification," said Tracy Richardson, President StarGen, Inc. "By participating in the specification development and in developing a line of products we can help ensure that Advanced Switching closely aligns with today's StarFabric capabilities and contains the features our customers require. Our customers can today deploy systems with Advanced Switching functionality and be guaranteed seamless access to PCI Express Advanced Switching when available on StarGen devices in 2004."

About StarGen
StarGen (www.stargen.com) is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed a new switched interconnect technology, StarFabric, for the communication and embedded industries. The technology benefits vendors of carrier and enterprise communication platforms for next generation voice, data, and video networks. Early adopters include those building open standards based access/edge equipment such as media over packet gateways, convergence switches, broadband access concentrators, wireless base stations, cable headend systems, edge routers, and remote access concentrators. Many embedded applications benefit from StarGen's distributed multi-processing features. StarGen's technology provides a dramatic increase in equipment performance, reliability, and Quality of Service while providing for the retention of existing standards-based hardware and software investment. StarGen is headquartered in Marlborough Massachusetts.