Marvell Introduces the AVANTA Series - Delivering up to Twenty Times the Internet Bandwidth to Homes

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced the first member of the AVANTA™ family of broadband optical access solutions for Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON), Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) and 10Gigabit EPON.  This new family of broadband solutions offers up to 20 times the bandwidth of traditional copper-based networking solutions.  The first members of the AVANTA family are single-chip for Single-Family-Unit (SFU) devices, with unprecedented levels of integration, performance and a radically reduced energy footprint, providing optimal solutions for mass-deployment of next generation video-centric and interactive Internet.

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The "pipe" into the home sets the bar for the consumer experience for home entertainment, productivity and communications.  Optical Access provides the technology leap to enable high broadband throughput ranging from 100Mbps to 2.5Gbps per home overcoming the current limitations with copper-wired infrastructure.  This expanded throughput is necessary for streaming 3D High Definition content in real time as well as user-to-user and user to cloud interactive applications.  Worldwide demand for optical access is expected to grow 250% in 2010.(1)

"Consumers worldwide have a growing appetite for media-rich entertainment such as IPTV, interactive video, and multiplayer games. For these applications, PON offers much more bandwidth than DSL copper technology," said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "Marvell's new EPON and GPON products can play an important role in the replacement of DSL in North America and enable households in countries such as India and China to take advantage of huge amounts of bandwidth with their first broadband installation."

The first set of products from Marvell's new AVANTA series are single chip for SFU applications, addressing both standards of the passive optical networks: the ITU GPON standard mostly adopted in the United States and the European Union, as well as the IEEE EPON standard mostly adopted in major Asia-pacific countries including China.  The AVANTA 88F6510 features a high level of integration, including a Gigahertz class CPU, dual-mode PON MAC, Line-rate IPv6-capable programmable packet processor, Voice-over-IP, Ethernet Switch and Ethernet PHYs.  The AVANTA series uses exceptionally low power and significantly reduces the bill-of-material for PON SFU devices to enable wide deployment.

Marvell has set the bar high by offering a single-chip solution with Gigahertz processing power, for video-centric, interactive content and applications that enable new services for consumers. Optical Access transforms the digital home; IP bandwidth processing and CPU performance have quadrupled compared with DSL. This new breed of technology is needed by service providers to offer next generation services at affordable cost/power points.  

"Globally, carriers are challenged to increase bandwidth, add more services and driver lower power, while reducing cost. Marvell's open software eco-system, exceptional levels of performance, high-integration and low-power solutions solve the challenges for service providers who are driving optical broadband," said Simon Milner, General Manager EBU, "Marvell has solved all of these challenges by offering a dual-mode device with a Gigahertz-class CPU running all open-source software, and its plugcomputer.org eco-system. With plentiful bandwidth, and ability to offer differentiated services, we believe CPU performance will be the key technology for Internet 3.0., a cloud centric, interactive Internet."

The AVANTA series is the first to introduce multiple low-power techniques in the PON space - ranging from dynamic CPU speed throttling, sleep mode, low-power DDR3-SDRAM and IEEE Energy-Efficient-Ethernet (EEE) draft-compliance.  The Marvell platform supports tens of 3D HD interactive video streams and a line-rate packet processor with hardware multicasting. It is also the first to support the IEEE Audio-Video-Bridging (AVB) draft specifications.  The integrated programmable packet processor not only supports IPv6 but also future-proofs the platform for emerging protocols like DOCSIS over PON.

The AVANTA family will sample to customers at the end of March.  For more information on the AVANTA 88F6510 and other Marvell products please contact a sales representative through www.marvell.com

About Marvell

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) is a leader in the development of storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions. The company's diverse product portfolio includes switching, transceiver, communications controller, wireless, and storage solutions that power the entire communications infrastructure including enterprise, metro, home, and storage networking. As used in this release, the terms "company" and "Marvell" refer to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries. For more information, visit http://www.marvell.com ?c=1&c=2

Marvell and M logo are registered trademarks of Marvell or its affiliates.  Avanta is a trademark of Marvell or its affiliates.  Other names and brands may be claimed as property of others.

(1) From "A Guide to Broadband Chips" fourth edition.  Published December 2008 by The Linley Group.

SOURCE Marvell