December 06, 2006 08:00 ET

Cavium Networks & Entropic Communications Deliver High Performance Triple Play Solution for Distribution of Digital Media Over Coax

Joint Reference Solution Comes to Market With Common Customer Deploying Home Networking & Network Access Equipment

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA and SAN DIEGO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- December 6, 2006 -- Cavium Networks, a world leader in networking, security and embedded processor solutions, and Entropic Communications, the leading provider of digital media over coax chipsets, today announced the availability of two market-leading reference design platforms for products and systems targeting the distribution of digital entertainment to and inside the home. The joint reference design platforms are being used by OEMs developing triple play CPE gateways and network access equipment for service providers using coax to and inside the home.

The joint reference platforms offer OEMs ready to use production quality designs, reduced time-to-market, high-performance, low-power consumption and data security and integrity for CPE and Access equipment targeting digital media networks running on existing coaxial cabling.

There are two joint reference designs that are based on Cavium Networks' OCTEON™ and NITROX® Soho processors along with Entropic's c.LINK-270™ chipsets. The first reference design targeting home networking has a gateway performance of over 130 Mbps and consists of the Cavium Networks' NITROX Soho MIPS32® processor and Entropic's c.LINK-270 Home Networking chipset.

The second reference design targeting network access to the home applications consist of, Cavium Networks' OCTEON MIPS64® CN3120 multicore network services processor and Entropic's c.LINK Network Access chipset. Providing triple play data, voice and video access to the home over coax is experiencing particularly strong growth in Japan, Korea and other countries in Asia, with specific deployments in multi-dwelling units (MDUs).

"Cavium Networks is pleased to partner with Entropic Communications to bring the integration, performance and scalability of our products to the home access and home networking markets," said Rajiv Khemani, VP of Marketing at Cavium Networks.

"These platforms ensure uninterrupted video with the performance, ease of design in and security safeguards already integrated for incorporation into triple play service offerings," said John Graham, VP of Marketing at Entropic Communications. "Cavium Networks is the only processor vendor with market leading families for both ends of the network enabling us to provide a complete best-of-breed solution to our joint customers."

Cavium Networks OCTEON & NITROX Soho Processors

The OCTEON CN31XX Processor Family includes both single and dual core, high performance MIPS64 processors with hardware acceleration for specialized packet handling, QoS, security, compression/decompression and regular expression processing. The CN3120, featured with Entropic c.Link in a Network Access device has dual cnMIPS64 cores with networking application performance of up to 2Gbps. These processors are ideal for Enterprise Routers, Gateways, UTM appliances, Service cards and Triple Play gateways. The NITROX Soho family products are MIPS32 based system-on-a-chip processors operating at speeds up to 200MHz providing 200 Mbps of forwarding performance with support for integrated IPsec and SSL acceleration. This family is ideally suited for CPEs and SOHO Routers/Gateways. Both product families support optimized drivers for Entropic c.Link MoCA™ chipset.

Entropic c.LINK technology

c.LINK is used in a variety of consumer broadband electronics such as DVR and client side set-top boxes, broadband home routers, residential gateways, Ethernet to coax bridges and optical network termination (ONT) units to enable whole-home distribution of digital video and entertainment over the existing coaxial cable infrastructure. The high speed, reliability and ubiquity of coax make it the ideal medium for networking high-bandwidth applications such as video, without the need for new wiring or truck rolls, a major consideration for telco, cable and satellite service providers. c.LINK, with a PHY data rate of 270 Mpbs, operates in the 800 - 1500 MHz frequency band, between the cable and satellite bands, avoiding the inevitable interference issues plaguing other technologies, mediums and consumer electronics devices.

About Cavium Networks

Cavium Networks is a world leader in security and MIPS®-based single and multi-core processors for networking, wireless, storage and control plane applications. Cavium Networks offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors and accelerator boards ranging in performance from 10 Mbps to 20+ Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in SOHO/SME, enterprise and service provider network equipment. Cavium Networks processors are supported by a rich ecosystem of software, silicon and ODM hardware solutions from leading vendors in networking, unified threat management (UTM), wireless, voice, operating system, Java, motherboard and other areas. Cavium Networks is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, CA with development centers in Marlborough, MA and India. For more information, please visit: http://www.caviumnetworks.com.

About Entropic Communications

Entropic Communications, Inc., is the leading developer of LAN and WAN coax networking for home digital entertainment. Entropic's products allow consumers to easily share digital entertainment throughout the home by leveraging the existing coax infrastructure to fundamentally change the way content such as movies, music, and images are stored and networked by the average user. For more information: www.entropic.com.

OCTEON™ and NITROX® are trademarks of Cavium Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. ©Cavium Networks, Inc. 2006.