NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR ENABLES INDUSTRY'S FIRST COMPLETE GIGABIT ETHERNET ADAPTER-CARD SOLUTION

National's Complete Manufacturing Kit Combines the Second-Generation Enhanced Gig PHYTER, the Gig MAC, Software and Design Collateral, Significantly Reducing Time-to-Market

May 25, 2000 - National Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:NSM) today announced the delivery of the first total 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit-over-copper adapter-card manufacturing kit solution with the industry's lowest power consumption to its key customers. National is uniquely positioned to drive the next generation of Ethernet networks by combining the low-power Enhanced Gig PHYTER™ DP83861 transceiver, the Gig MAC DP83820 network interface controller and a complete suite of software drivers.

"The Enhanced Gig PHYTER offers manufacturers everything they need for quick time-to-market implementation into existing infrastructures," said Lauri Vickers, industry analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group. "The Enhanced Gig PHYTER is a state-of-the-art chip with the lowest power dissipation in the industry. National has itself a winner."

"The Gigabit segment is the fastest-growing segment of the LAN market," said IdaRose Sylvester, senior industry analyst of Dataquest/GartnerGroup. "Products with low power and high interoperability will enjoy a faster adoption rate by allowing higher switch port counts, enabling the Gigabit marketplace."

"National's Gigabit NIC (network interface card) solution answers one of the most important questions network administrators face: How to prepare the infrastructure for the inevitable transition to Gigabit bandwidth without disturbing the existing network and at an economical cost-point," said Brian Halla, CEO of National. "The combination of low power consumption and unmatched interoperability provided by National allows administrators to quickly, easily and economically 'future-proof' their entire network."

About the Gig MAC Network Interface Controller
The new Gig MAC DP83820 controller is a fully-integrated media access controller on 0.18 micron process technology that can support full duplex 10/100/1000 Mbps transmission and reception. It supports both fiber (1000BASE-X) and copper (1000BASE-T) tranceivers via Ten-Bit interface (TBI) and GMII interfaces, allowing implementation of long haul and short haul NICs. To jump start the Gigabit NIC market National is also providing a full suite of software drivers including support for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows 2000, Linux, Novell, SCO Unixware, SCO Open Server, Solaris, MacIntosh OS9 and Vx Works.

The DP83820 is a fully IEEE 802.3 compliant MAC that supports data rates from 1Mbps to 1000Mbps. It also has an extremely flexible PCIv2.2 host, that supports bus speeds of 33MHz and 66MHz and bus widths of 32 and 64 bits. This allows easy deployment of server class and client class NICs based on the same device, saving OEMs development cost, and IT managers deployment complexity.

The Gig MAC provides full Wake-On-LAN (WOL) support, and is fully ACPI power management compliant. It features 802.1D and 802.1Q priority queuing to support QoS for next generation, converged voice, video and data networks, 802.3ad link aggregation, load balancing, and failover support for increased robustness and performance in mission critical networks. The DP83820 also supports full duplex flow control, including automatic transmission, checksum offloading, support for 9kB Jumbo Packets, and JTAG boundary scan.

About the Low-Power Enhanced Gig PHYTER Transceiver
The Enhanced Gig PHYTER DP83861 transceiver is an IEEE-compliant, integrated 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit-over-copper Ethernet transceiver that is totally interoperable with all previously shipped Gigabit products and now offers the industry's lowest power consumption, raising the bar of performance for the Gigabit-over-copper industry.

The Enhanced Gig PHYTER transceiver is the second generation of National's proven Gigabit technology, based on the same robust architecture unveiled earlier this year and currently in volume production with National's networking customers. The Enhanced Gig PHYTER transceiver has the same package and is pin-to-pin compatible with the Gig PHYTER DP83891, requiring no layout changes.

"With National's DSP expertise and our state-of-the-art fabrication facilities in Maine, in just three months we have been able to quickly migrate from the 0.35 micron to 0.18 micron process, vaulting our Gigabit solution ahead of the competition," said Gobi Padmanabhan, senior vice president of National's Network Products Group. "National's Gigabit-over-copper Ethernet PHY offers our customers the industry's best combination of power dissipation, performance, and interoperability with existing installations."

With separate logic cores for 10/100Mbps and Gigabit modes, the Enhanced Gig PHYTER transceiver allows low-power Wake-on-LAN functionality to be implemented in adapter cards, providing a significant advantage for National's infrastructure and workgroup switch partners.

The Gig PHYTER DP83861 transceiver is designed for easy implementation of 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet LANs. It uses a standard single Quad TX-Transformer interface and performs error-free operations in excess of the IEEE-standard 100 meters. This robust operation ensures successful deployment of the Gigabit technology within an existing 10/100M environment using CAT5 cabling.

Other features of the Enhanced Gig PHYTER include IEEE 802.3u-compliant Auto-negotiation at all three speeds and an Auto-MDIX that automatically detects and corrects wiring problems such as MDI crossover, swapped pairs and reverse polarity. These features provide intelligence within the chip to correct most common wiring problems. The on-chip circuitry also provides adaptive equalization, echo cancellation, cross-talk cancellation, precision analog to digital converters, forward error correction and others that allow robust and error-free operation.

Availability
The DP83820 Gig MAC network interface, the DP83861 Enhanced Gig PHYTER Ethernet transceiver and the complete manufacturing kit are currently being sampled, and are expected to be in full production by July 2000.

Press Photos

DP83861	DP83820	DP83861/DP83820

About National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor provides system-on-a-chip solutions for the information age. Combining real-world analog and state-of the-art digital technology, the company's chips lead many sectors of the personal computer, communications, and consumer markets. With headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., National reported sales of $2 billion for its last fiscal year and has about 10,500 employees worldwide. Additional company and product information is available on the World Wide Web at www.national.com.