[August 6, 2001]

Virata Launches Two New Processors For The Emerging Residential Gateway Market

Virata Corporation unveiled two new Helium family members -- the Helium 210-80 and the Helium 100 processors -- specifically designed to meet the various price, performance and feature requirements of broadband modems, bridges and routers.

Utilizing a high-performance dual 80 MHz engine, the Helium 210-80 delivers the raw performance required to run sophisticated routing protocols, such as Virata's integrated firewall and security software, and also features a rich array of I/O capabilities for wireless home networking. Complementing the Helium 210-80, the Helium 100 was designed to meet the low-cost requirements of the broadband modem market, where price/performance is critical for winning business with service providers.

"Virata is the only company that can deliver both the processing power and the critical firewall, security and auto-configuration software, which will help enable a mass retail market for broadband services," said Duncan Greatwood, vice president of marketing for Virata. "Our proven Integrated Software on Silicon (ISOS) platform uniquely integrates all of these capabilities into one complete solution that our customers can use to bring products to market quickly and cost-effectively."

With the addition of the Helium 210-80 and Helium 100, Virata's customers can offer a wide variety of products targeted at multiple market segments. Because all of the Helium family, including the new Helium 210-80 and Helium 100, use Virata's ISOS software, there is a minimal amount of software development and integration required to develop multiple products for different market segments.

Based on its performance and feature set, the Helium 210-80 meets the needs of the mid-range and high-end residential and small business bridge and router markets and is ideal for running applications such as security, firewalls and high-speed networking. Delivering an array of features, Helium 210-80 includes dual 80 MHz processors, integrated 10/100 Mbit Ethernet PHY and supports up to 31 Utopia (ATM or DSL) ports. In addition, the Helium 210-80 delivers an extremely flexible residential gateway platform with a range of high-performance interconnects that enable plug-and-play wired and wireless gateways for the home or office. These interconnects include MII and PCMCIA, enabling the simple addition of wired and wireless networking PHYs such as HomePNA, HomeRF, 802.11b and Bluetooth.

The Helium 100 complements the Helium 210-80 by delivering the perfect solution for the low-end DSL to Ethernet bridge. In this market, the critical requirement is cost and the Helium 100's leading-edge .18 micron design and high software/hardware integration meets this need, while still benefiting from the performance and extensive functionality of Virata's ISOS platform.

ISOS is one of the most comprehensive software suites available today and has been deployed in more than six million broadband wireline (e.g. DSL) and wireless installations. Virata's newest ISOS 8.0 incorporates software support for the DSL Forum and OpenDSL auto-configuration guidelines and specifications; Web-based configuration and management; Frame Relay including Frame Relay to ATM internetworking support; expanded MIBs (Management Information Bases); SNMP v2 and v3; as well as ATM Traffic Management features such as EPD (Early Packet Discard) and PPD (Partial Packet Discard). These new features enhance the existing capabilities of ISOS which include: ATM traffic shaping, switching, segmentation and reassembly; ATM Adaptation layers, such as AAL-0, 2, and 5; UNI signaling 3.0, 3.1, 4.0; ILMI 4.0 and auto-provisioning extensions; CBR, VBR-rt, VBR-nrt, and UBR; and full I.610 management implementation.

In addition, ISOS supports the following capabilities: framed data for HDLC and Ethernet; PCI and USB interfaces; Protocol encapsulation (e.g., PPP over ATM, PPP over Ethernet, Bridged RFC 1483, RFC 1577, and LEC); bridging and routing functions including spanning-tree, RIP-1, RIP-2, DHCP, DNS, and NAT; tunneling functions (PPTP and L2TP); SNMP v1; wide-area codecs (ADSL, V.90); and voice functions (AAL-2 CPCS and AAL-2 SSCS for CopperCom, Jetstream and I.366 versions). Other key features of ISOS include drivers for popular third party WAN DSL codecs (i.e., Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Conexant); and Virata's industry leading voice-processing software, vCore, with DTMF, echo cancellation, and G.7xx codec suite. In addition, Virata will continue to extend future versions of ISOS into new areas of communications processing, including additional security (e.g. IPSec VPN support); UPnP; MPLS and other advanced routing functions.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]