"AMD believes that Gigabit Ethernet technology is the optimum solution to enable businesses to scale their networks, while maximizing their current investments in Ethernet infrastructures and expertise," said Laila Razouk, vice president of AMD's network products division. "The GigaPHY-SD chip is proof of our ongoing commitment to deliver a broad range of high-performance, quality solutions that are price-competitive and backed by solid product support and customer service."

Gigabit Ethernet is an extension to 10- and 100-Megabit-per-second Ethernet technology, which connects more than 80 percent of today's networked desktops. Because of its compatibility with existing Ethernet infrastructures, Gigabit Ethernet has emerged as a dominant technology to take Fast Ethernet to the next echelon of high-performance networking.

"The insatiable demand for high-bandwidth solutions fueled by the widespread use of the Internet and corporate Intranets, is forcing companies to migrate to higher-performance technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet," said Greg Sheppard, chief analyst of Dataquest's semiconductor group. "The physical layer solutions like GigaPHY-SD chip are essential components of Gigabit Ethernet equipment, which enable corporate networks to efficiently transport complex data such as voice, graphics, video and multi-media applications, that are crucial to global business and communications."

The GigaPHY-SD chip is based upon technology developed by Vitesse and AMD. AMD developed the TAXI™ chip (Transparent Asynchronous Xmitter - Receiver Interface), which acts as a high-speed serial link between two high-performance parallel buses. Vitesse advanced the TAXI chip to operate at Gigabit speeds.

The GigaPHY-SD chip can be deployed in backbone interconnect options for Ethernet switches, in switch or repeater uplinks and in connections between high-performance servers. The device operates between a network cable and a Gigabit Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC). The GigaPHY-SD chip interfaces with fiber optic transceivers or directly drives co-axial copper twinax cabling. It provides serialization of transmit data and deserialization of receive data at 1.25 Gbps to provide a raw data rate of 1.0 Gbps.,P> AMD is an active member of the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, a group of more than 60 leading semiconductor companies and network suppliers created to educate and promote the widespread adoption of Gigabit Ethernet.

Availability/Pricing
The GigaPHY-SD (Am79761) device will be available in small quantities in OCTOBER 1997 priced at $23.50 in 1,000 unit volumes.