Download 4th ed, Pt8

Hardware Design & Manufacturing
Agere Systems
A
gere Systems, Inc. is a world leader
in semiconductors and optoelectronics components for communications
applications. Agere had a successful IPO
in 2000 and now trades under the symbol AGR on the NYSE. The IPO was the
result of a spinoff from Lucent Technologies. Agere’s optoelectronics and integrated circuits enable customers to develop the next generation of networking
and communications equipment.
The Agere Austin site was originally
a privately-held Austin startup, Agere Inc.,
which was acquired by Lucent Technologies in early 2000. Agere Inc. was started
to commercialize a patented technology
96 High Tech Austin
for building network processors which
are used for the construction of wirespeed network routers and switches.
In October of 2000 Agere delivered
the industry-leading PayloadPlus network
processor which can handle traffic at 2.5
Gigabit-per-second. Network processors
are an emerging and exciting class of
semiconductors that combine the speed
of a custom-designed chip with the flexibility and programmability of a generalpurpose microprocessor for networking
applications.
The Austin group continues to focus
on the development of leading edge network processing technology and is now
part of the Processor, Aggregation and
Switch (PAS) organization headed by
Ford Tamer. Some of the key products and
services offered by the PAS group out of
the Austin location include PayloadPlus
processor ICs, evaluation/demonstration
systems, application code, software development environments, and design services. The Agere Austin group is also
working on the development of breakthrough 10 and 40 Gigabit-per-second
technology.
The PAS organization also includes
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) products
for wireless infrastructure applications,
switch fabrics and aggregation devices.
Agere’s leading edge DSP products enable the substantial growth and evolu-
tion of wireless communications. Switch
fabrics are devices that relay packets of
data according through network pathways based on industry standard communications protocols and are used
throughout the Internet and voice infrastructures. Agere’s latest switch products
are capable of blazing fast multi-Terabitper-second speeds.