MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. October 9, 2006 – Cavium Networks, a world leader in networking, security and embedded processor solutions, today announced the newest members of the OCTEON Multi-core MIPS64® Processor family. The 1 Gigahertz OCTEON Plus family doubles the performance of the market leading OCTEON CN38XX through higher frequency and architectural enhancements, and adds key new features, while maintaining full software and pin compatibility. OCTEON Plus processors also include innovative power management techniques that deliver up to 2X higher performance in the same power budget to set new performance per watt records. OCTEON processors have been widely adopted by Tier-1 OEMs for networking, security, control plane, wireless, storage and broadband gateway applications based on superior performance, lower power consumption, and broadest scalability. Cavium Networks will present details of the OCTEON Plus processor architecture on October 11th at the Fall Microprocessor Forum, being held in San Jose , California .

OCTEON™ Plus CN58XX Processor Family
The OCTEON Plus CN58XX Processor family consists of 12 different software-compatible parts with 4 to 16 cnMIPS™ Plus cores providing up to 16GHz of 64bit compute processing and 2MB of on-chip L2 Cache. Additionally OCTEON Plus incorporates the most advanced multi-layer application acceleration for networking control, data and services applications. The OCTEON™ Plus CN58XX Processor family integrates popular networking and memory I/Os including up to 8x Gigabit ports, up to 2x SPI-4.2, PCI-X, 72/144 bit DDR2 controller, and 2x 18bit RLDRAM II controllers. It also includes extensive on-chip hardware acceleration for packet processing, QoS, TCP, compression, encryption, Robust Header Compression, KASUMI, and pattern matching to deliver higher performance with much lower power consumption over alternative solutions.

High Performance, Unified Control, Data and Services for Networking and Wireless
Enterprises and Service Providers are deploying an array of applications using data, voice and video over wired and wireless networks. These business applications and personalized content need to be delivered to users anytime, anywhere, on any platform with QoS, security and intelligence. These new applications drive the need for processing and integration requirements for embedded networking processors to be orders of magnitude higher. Furthermore the deployment of newer industry-standard form factors for telecom equipment such as ATCA, AMC and micro-TCA mandates hitting up to full-duplex 10 Gigabit performance within tight power envelopes and size limitations.

“The next generation of converged wired and wireless infrastructure equipment requires high compute performance along with features such as Robust Header Compression (ROHC), KASUMI security and subscriber management services within strict power budgets,” said Ian Eigenbrod, Senior Research Analyst at IDC. “Processor vendors that deliver leading performance and performance/watt characteristics, general purpose software programmability and targeted application acceleration are well positioned to capture major designs for next generation networking and wireless equipment.”

OCTEON: De-facto Choice for Scalable Networking, Wireless and Security Applications
OCTEON processors, first announced at Fall Processor Forum 2004, went to volume production within a record timeline and have become the de-facto industry choice for demanding L2-L7 networking services, wireless and security applications across majority of Tier-1 OEMs due to their leading performance, low power, scalability and most advanced application acceleration. The single core to 16 core processors have been integrated into over 100 designs that include Routers, L3+ Switches, UTM, Storage, 3G & WLAN Wireless, WiMAX, Broadband Gateways, and VOIP. Customer end products based on the OCTEON family have started rolling out to customers in 2H 2006.

“Integrated multi-core processors with on-chip application acceleration have established themselves as the most efficient method of powering next-generation networking platforms,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group. “In the past 5 years, Cavium has delivered more multi-core products to production, including the NITROX security and OCTEON multi-core MIPS64 processor families, than any other networking silicon supplier. With OCTEON Plus, Cavium raises the bar by offering the world's fastest general-purpose processor for packet processing and security applications.”

“Cavium has doubled the performance of the Multi-Core OCTEON family in less than two years,” said Syed Ali, President and CEO of Cavium Networks. “Today, Cavium has the broadest line of embedded multi-core processors in the industry that address a growing range of applications. Through our broad product line, continued strong execution, and an aggressive roadmap, we are committed to providing scalable, high-performance and highly integrated solutions that networking OEM customers can rely on for the long term.”

Standard Operating System and C Software
OCTEON processors support standard operating systems including Linux®, MontaVista® Linux and Wind River® for both VxWorks® and Linux® along with a thin executive for fast-path data-plane software. Cavium Networks provides a complete Software Development Kit with Linux, GNU tool-chain, GDB development environment and popular third party tool-chain and development support that enables thousands of MIPS32, MIPS64 and other C/C++ applications to be easily ported to OCTEON. Additionally, Cavium Networks provides APIs, L2 to L4 reference software, WLAN drivers and software toolkits for IPsec, SSL, SSL-VPN and TCP stacks, to enable quick time to market.

Broad Development, Ecosystem and Reference Design support
OCTEON Plus is supported by over 30 different independent software vendors (ISVs) and independent hardware vendors (IHVs) providing ready off-the-shelf products for OS/Tools, software stacks, hardware systems, and complimentary silicon. OCTEON and OCTEON Plus designs are available in standard ATX 1U, 2U, 3U configurations, ATCA card and AMC form factors. Cavium Networks ecosystem partners also provide pre-integrated software support for IPv6 ready networking stacks, management plane, UTM applications, VOIP and Java Virtual Machine.

Product Family, Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the OCTEON™ CN58XX family ranges from $255, 4-core 600MHz SCP version, to $987, 16-core 1GHz SCP version, in 10K unit quantities. Like the OCTEON CN38XX family, the OCTEON Plus CN58XX processors are available in the NSP, EXP, SCP and CP versions which support varying types of on chip hardware accelerators. The OCTEON Development Kit using Simulator, tool-chain and reference applications are available now to partner companies. OCTEON™ CN58XX family processors and evaluation boards will be available in Q1, 2007.

About Cavium Networks
Cavium Networks is a world leader in security and MIPS® -based single and multi-core processors for networking, wireless, storage and control plane applications. Cavium Networks offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors and accelerator boards ranging in performance from 10 Mbps to Full Duplex 10Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in SOHO/SME, enterprise and service provider network equipment. Cavium Networks processors are supported by a rich ecosystem of software, silicon and ODM hardware solutions from leading vendors in networking, unified threat management (UTM), wireless, voice, operating system, Java, motherboard and other areas. Cavium Networks is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View , CA with development centers in Marlborough , MA and India . For more information,
please visit: http://www.caviumnetworks.com