IPextreme Provides Solarflare Additional Licenses of Infineon C166SV1 Microcontroller IP

-- IPextreme®, Inc., the company bringing famous IP (intellectual property) to system-on-chip designers worldwide, and Solarflare Communications, the leading provider of standards-compliant 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) silicon solutions, announced that after a successful release of the 10Xpress SFT9001 10GBASE-T PHY, the existing C166SV1 Microcontroller license has been extended.

Consuming only 5 watts of power, the SFT9001 is the industry’s lowest power 10GBASE-T PHY. Solarflare designs and develops the highest-performing, lowest-power, standards-compliant 10GbE controllers and 10GBASE-T transceivers on the market. The company's PHY and controller are optimized for applications such as virtualization, network storage convergence and rich media. They enable switch, storage and server original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to build cost-effective, standards-based products for enterprise and data center markets.

Solarflare licensed Infineon’s C166SV1 from IPextreme after making a careful evaluation of several suitable cores, taking their first, second and third licenses in 2004, 2006 and 2008 respectively. Among key requirements were to have a synthesizable core, good software ecosystem, high-quality and low cost. The C166SV1 met and exceeded these requirements. The 16-bit C166SV1 has a great price/performance ratio, beating many 32-bit CPUs, and is supported by an extensive ecosystem of software development and debug tools, operating systems, application software, boards, modeling tools and consultants. The C166SV1’s exceptional quality and reliability has made it a standard in the automotive sector and it is now also being utilized in networking applications.

"We are extremely satisfied with the Infineon C166SV1 core and IPextreme. The quality of this IP core was evident from this mature and industry-proven controller core and was the reason we chose the C166s above any other options,” says Brad Masters, vice president of engineering, Solarflare Communications. “Furthermore, we have been able to integrate it very quickly into our design and development flow. We have also been very impressed by the expert knowledge and support from IPextreme engineers who were able to assist our ASIC and software development teams throughout the project to help us meet our aggressive schedule."

“Solarflare is using the C166SV1 to their best advantage and their decision to reuse the Infineon C166SV1 core is not surprising given the performance and reliability of the core,” said Rick Tomihiro, vice president of marketing at IPextreme. “The easy-to-integrate core reduces engineering effort and accelerates time-to-market, an important consideration to a market leader like Solarflare.”

About Solarflare Communications

Solarflare Communications is a semiconductor company delivering the next level of high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). As the leading provider of standards-based 10GbE silicon, Solarflare delivers robust and power-efficient solutions that are cost effective and easy to deploy. Now real and ready for primetime, Solarflare 10 Gigabit Ethernet makes possible next-generation applications such as streaming rich media, Web 2.0, server virtualization and network convergence. Solarflare is working with key industry partners and customers to ensure interoperability and drive a 10GBASE-T complete ecosystem. The privately held company is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. with a development center in Cambridge, UK. For additional information, see www.solarflare.com.

About IPextreme Inc.

IPextreme licenses famous semiconductor IP (intellectual property) and methodologies developed by large semiconductor companies to chip designers worldwide. These production-proven IP products serve both broad horizontal markets and specific verticals such as consumer and automotive, and are provided in a process-independent and EDA-neutral format for easy use by the widest range of customers. With a decade of experience in developing, packaging, licensing and supporting IP, IPextreme offers a complete business solution that allows semiconductor companies to strategically leverage their internal IP portfolio and expand overall revenue. The company has offices in Campbell, California; Munich, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan with representatives in China, India, Israel, Korea and Taiwan. For additional information, please visit www.ip-extreme.com.