Fulcrum Microsystems announced FocalPoint, a family of 10-Gigabit Ethernet Switch Chips that offer a total latency of 200ns. As many as 24 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, each containing an integrated 10-Gigabit Ethernet Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI), and 8 Mb of on-chip packet storage, are all contained within a single integrated chip. Initially, Fulcrum is offering two members of the FocalPoint product family:

-FM2224: Contains 24 quad-SerDes 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, each of which can operate in 10 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps, 1 Gbps, 100 Mbps, and 10 Mbps modes.

-FM2112: Contains 8 quad-SerDes 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, along with 16 single-SerDes interfaces that can support 2.5 Gbps, 1 Gbps, 100 Mbps, and 10 Mbps operating modes.  The device is intended to provide an economical solution for dense 2.5 Gbps and 1 Gbps applications.

Both devices offer a set of standards-compliant layer-two Ethernet switch features, including port and MAC-based VLANs, link aggregation, port and MAC based security, and Spanning Tree link management. In addition, the devices contain enhancements to support advanced topologies such as mesh architectures and fully-provisioned fat trees.

At the core of both devices are two patented Fulcrum technology blocks: Nexus Crossbar switching technology delivers more than a Terabit-per-second of non-blocking throughput with 3ns of internal latency.  RapidArray Packet Memory delivers twice the throughput of commercial memories, while maintaining comparable density and yield.

Pricing and Availability

Both chips will be sampling in January 2006. The price for the 24-port FM2224 is $450 in 5,000 unit quantities (less than $20 per port); the price for the 8/16-port FM2112 is $285 in 5,000 unit quantities. A fully-integrated 1U-high evaluation platform will be available in January for rapid test and development.