Santa Clara, CA — (press release excerpt) — At the Metro Optical Networking Forum today, Xilinx, Inc. unveiled its strategy to increase its penetration in the $23 billion dollar metro area networking (MAN) market. Xilinx has determined, and industry observers agree, that increased demand for broadband services, virtual private networks and deployment of new services such as video on demand, will play a… crucial role in a sustainable rebound of the current economic slump in the telecommunications sector. Xilinx' focus in the MAN market is designed to stimulate growth and address current 'metro bottleneck' issues.

Metro bottleneck issues arising from the disparity in bandwidth between the corporate LAN and the WAN continue to fuel product development in this space. The challenge is that fiber optic rings circling major metropolitan areas were designed for voice traffic, and are now being used primarily for data traffic. Addressing this challenge requires the development and deployment of new equipment based on new and emerging standards, while simultaneously provisioning new services that demand advanced packet processing and traffic management technologies.

Xilinx embarked on the first phase of its strategy earlier this year by rolling out a high-performance line of programmable chips with embedded IBM PowerPC processors. A suite of world-class development tools and operating systems including VxWorks and Linux from industry leaders WindRiver and MontaVista supports the PowerPC, the established leading microprocessor architecture in the MAN market.

Xilinx efforts culminated this week with the introduction of an online resource for MAN product development and by teaming with industry leaders to produce the Metro Optical Networking Forum. Xilinx teamed with leading edge companies such as Allegro Networks to produce the industry's first event to address the challenges of designing products for the MAN market.

 
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