The access market got a surprise boost today with
ImmenStar's announcement of the industry's first fully integrated high
density EPON switch chipset. The breakthrough switching technology,
programmable traffic engineering and highly integrated software of
Immenstar's MuLan(TM) EPON Switch Chipset has remained a closely
guarded secret during its two years intensive development, adding even
greater impact to today's announcement that the chipset is not only
available now but is already being shipped in volume to five
countries.
"From its creation in May 2004, ImmenStar has approached product
development with total attention to end systems integration" explained
John Wuu, Immenstar President and CEO. "We have tremendous up-front
focus on architectural emulation and software development in addition
to chip design. The result is a complete system-level solution to
slash development costs and accelerate time-to-market. The proof of
our success lies in the response among the companies we've approached
prior to publication, for we are already shipping multimillion dollar
orders across 5 nations with a further ten companies looking ready to
follow."
Further confirmation comes from Principal Analyst and Co-Founder
Infonetics Research Inc, Michael Howard who commented "The innovations
in high density, integration, price, and performance put the MuLan
EPON Switch Chipset in a good position to be considered for the next
generation of EPON equipment design; the IS8020 Quad OLT is the first
that we have seen that integrates four OLT ports and non-blocking
switching into a single chip."
With comparative stagnation in the optical core market in recent
years, attention has been directed to fiber access and a potential
growth to $1.9 billion by 2009 with soaring demand for 'triple play'
voice, video and data services to the home and office. The strength of
Passive Optical Networking (PON) lies in its reliance on simpler, more
rugged and lower cost "passive" optical splitters in the field. The
active elements consist of Optical Line Terminals (OLTs) at Central
Office, and Optical network Units (ONUs) at the end user sites.
"The IEC estimated that ONUs typically account for 70% of the cost
of Fiber To The Business (FTTB) and 80% of the cost of Fiber To The
Home (FTTH) systems" adds John Wuu. "With that in mind ImmenStar
architects its MuLan chipset in such way that we focus the complexity
at the Central Office end and keep the Customer Premise Equipment
(CPE) end simple and highly integrated. By doing so, we believe our
MuLan IS8010 chip would significantly reduce the cost at CPE".
The MuLan EPON Switch Chipset comprises four members, plus the
ImmenStar iROS(TM) Operating System providing distributed and scalable
management and control of the entire chipset. IS8020 is the industry's
first Quad EPON OLT chip integrating four optical EPON ports and four
Gigabit Ethernet ports into a single chip with non-blocking traffic
forwarding. The second OLT chip is IS8030 with a single optical EPON
port and identical features at a reduced cost. IS8010 EPON ONU chip is
a low-cost ONU chip that implements Optical Network Unit (ONU)
functions for the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE). IS8015 is an
enhanced version of IS8010, providing multi-vendor interoperability
support. Together, the MuLan EPON Switch Chipset provides a
carrier-class Ethernet ultra broadband access solution for network
operators and service providers. The chipset is designed to accelerate
the next generation EPON system development cycle while extending
product lifetime by increasing system capabilities.
Underlining ImmenStar's commitment to end system integration is
the simultaneously launch of their Mulan SDK System Development Kit
evaluation platform. This platform provides system developers with a
complete evaluation system to accelerate the system design using the
chipset, and significantly reduce development cycle time and effort.
About ImmenStar, Inc.
ImmenStar, Inc. was founded in May 2004 to develop a revolutionary
new form of passive optical networks System-on-Chip (SoC) technology
and the company had 3 patents filed and a pilot silicon chip created
within a year. Subsequent development of its innovative MuLan(TM) EPON
Switch Chipset was kept under wraps for a further year before launch
in May 2006 with the product ready to ship and multimillion orders
already placed. ImmenStar is committed to being the world leader in
flexible, feature-rich, high performance solutions for ultra broadband
access networks and applications that enable video, voice and data
over Internet.
For more information, visit the company at www.immenstar.com.
