Xilinx and Brilliant Telecommunications Announce Industry's First Carrier-Class FPGA-Based Network Timing Solution for Next Generation Wired & Wireless Networks

-- Xilinx Inc., the world's leading provider of programmable logic solutions and Brilliant Telecommunications, Inc., a leading developer of precise and reliable timing solutions, today announced the industry's first carrier-class FPGA-based network timing solution for next generation wired and wireless networks. The jointly developed solution provides next-generation communication network designers with the first embedded programmable timing solution, delivering unparalleled flexibility, field upgradeability, and customization. By integrating timing functions into Xilinx FPGAs, the solution offers significant cost savings. Implemented using a Xilinx(R) Virtex(TM) or Spartan(TM) FPGA, the solution is delivered in the form of two Intellectual Property (IP) cores, NGNTime and FemtoTime. The cores are fully interoperable with the industry's leading standard Network Timing Protocol (NTP) and provide a migration path for Version 2 of IEEE 1588 or Precision Time Protocol (PTP).

"The build-out of IP-based telecom and wireless networks is creating tremendous demand for accurate and programmable timing solutions," said Amit Dhir, Director of Infrastructure Vertical Markets at Xilinx. "Through our collaboration with Brilliant Telecommunications, we have developed a versatile and customizable platform for network timing solutions to meet this market demand."

The offerings mitigate technology risk by allowing use of the widely deployed NTP protocol while providing a migration path to the telecom focused PTP protocol using the same hardware. The solution provides accurate timing from ingress to egress points across an entire (end-to-end) network to support next-generation applications such as wireless base stations, femtocell access points, IPTV routers/switches and mobile backhaul. Leveraging Xilinx FPGAs, users can customize embedded solutions for equipment manufactures by integrating precise timing in their products while expediting time-to-market.

"Accurate timing is a fundamental requirement in today's next-generation network environment to maximize bandwidth utilization and maintain subscribers QoS," said Dr. Charles Barry, President and CEO for Brilliant Telecommunications. "Through our collaboration with Xilinx, a fully customizable timing solution is available to equipment vendors."

Analysts Agree

"Service providers around the world are moving to IP/NGN networks, purchasing 10s of billions of dollars worth of products in each of many years to come. Equipment vendors recognize the need to integrate accurate timing functionality into their products to address the latency-sensitive requirements to both deliver and measure/guarantee QoS and SLAs for uses such as mobile backhaul, database transactions, VoIP, voice, video, and many other applications," said Michael Howard, principal analyst for Infonetics Research. "The Xilinx/Brilliant product meets the timing and synchronization requirements of both TDM-based and next-generation packet-based networks, while also providing a migration path from carrier-class NTP to the more stringent PTPv2 standards."

"The growth of services such as IPTV and VoIP is one of the greatest factors driving demand for precision timing solutions. The asynchronous nature of IP networks make it more challenging to deliver accurate time through an IP network than legacy networks," explains Jessy Cavazos, Industry Manager at Frost & Sullivan. "Using Xilinx FPGAs for network timing, Xilinx and Brilliant Telecommunications are able to meet key requirements of today's end-users, which are flexibility, high performance and low cost. Using an FPGA lowers the risks related to upgradeability to new standards. The flexibility of the Xilinx/Brilliant carrier-class solution also enables customers to differentiate their products from the competition."

Xilinx and Brilliant participated at a recent IEEE 1588 PTP plug-fest, the 2007 International IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement, Control and Communication (ISPCS) the week of October 1 in Vienna, Austria. The plug-fest provided an opportunity to test and demonstrate device and system interoperability of the new solution and resolve compatibility issues.

Availability

The solution is immediately available. For more information visit http://www.xilinx.com/networktiming.

About Brilliant Communications

Founded in 2004, Brilliant Telecommunications designs, develops, and distributes a family of network timing, management and synchronization solutions, including carrier-class NTP servers, Primary Reference Sources (PRS), and Building Integrated Timing Supplies (BITS). These highly accurate end-to-end timing network solutions deliver Service Level Agreement (SLA) monitoring and management capabilities, in addition to providing timing and synchronization to the most time-sensitive applications in legacy and next- generation IP networks. For more information please visit http://www.BrilliantTelecom.com.

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit http://www.xilinx.com