CAMARILLO, Cali. –Nov. 17, 2005–Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:VTSS), the market leader in Gigabit Ethernet ICs, today announced it has shipped in excess of 15 million Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) PHY ports to the worldwide market. By leveraging years of successful development and Tier 1 deployment of its single, quad, and octal SimpliPHY(TM) transceiver products, Vitesse has gained significant market share in the Gigabit LAN-on-Motherboard (GLOM), Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network (GEPON), and Small-Medium Enterprise (SME) Switch port market segments.

“This is a significant milestone for Vitesse, and demonstrates our ability to penetrate key growth markets and support our partners with a World Class GbE PHY product line,” said Martyn Humphries, general manager and vice president of Vitesse’s Ethernet Products Division. “Our patented architecture, mixed signal strength, and focus on PHY technology have enabled new design wins in multiple markets, and afforded Vitesse tremendous quarter-over-quarter growth.”

Vitesse’s complete portfolio of GbE PHYs include the most integrated PHYs in the industry. This results in lower power consumption and system costs, as well as a reduction in board space requirements. In their lowest power mode, the PHYs consume less than 500 mW of power per port, which is 30% less than competitive offerings. To reduce bill-of-materials (BOM) costs and board space requirements, the PHYs utilize integrated MAC and media-side terminations to minimize system complexity and to eliminate a large number of external components — for example, more than 300 passive components in a 24-port configuration. These innovative terminations also reduce PCB layout complexity, increase system timing margins, and minimize EMI engineering challenges.

Enhanced Connectivity for Copper, Fiber Optics, Backplanes, and Copper SFPs

The Vitesse family of PHYs are targeted at applications that require multiple media to be supported from the same switch port. Each port of the PHYs allows fixed copper ports, fiber optics, backplanes, or triple speed copper SFPs to be connected to a single Gigabit Ethernet switch port, increasing system design flexibility in SMB and Enterprise switch systems. With individual SerDes on both the MAC and media interfaces, the PHYs’ unique architecture maximizes receive jitter tolerance and minimizes transmit jitter in comparison to PHYs that use a single SerDes architecture. The Auto-Media Sense(TM) (AMS) feature of Vitesse’s PHYs intelligently detects and configures itself to support copper or fiber media on a per-port basis. With flexible support for both SGMII and 1000BASE-X MAC interfaces, the PHYs enable direct connectivity to Vitesse’s HawX(TM) series of Gigabit Ethernet switch ICs, as well as customer ASICs.

Extensive Testing and Cable Diagnostic Features

The Vitesse family of PHYs extensive testability features decreases system development and deployment costs, and improves time-to-market. The devices support near-end, far-end, and connector loopbacks, and offer an Ethernet Packet Generator with CRC error counter. These test modes enable manufacturers to simplify and even eliminate expensive test equipment used for production test of their switch systems.

In addition, Vitesse’s VeriPHY(TM) Cable Diagnostics prevent manufacturing fallout and erroneous equipment return due to defective or improperly installed cables. Extending the diagnostic capabilities commonly found in competitive offerings, Vitesse’s VeriPHY Cable Diagnostics detect plant conditions, such as cable length, opens, shorts, coupling between pairs, and termination status — all without having to bring down the link.

Superior Cable Reach and Noise Tolerance Increase System Reliability

The Vitesse family of PHYs uses a mainstream, cost-effective, 0.13 mm, digital CMOS process. They also include Vitesse’s field-proven, fully-adaptive equalization and innovative timing recovery algorithms, which continue to provide up to 10 times greater noise tolerance performance than the competition. Superior noise tolerance eases system design and installation challenges in high-density Gigabit Ethernet switches, blade servers, and line cards, as well as in legacy copper cable plants with sub-standard cables, marginal connectors and patch cords, and noise from other communications services.

Advanced SFP Control, VoIP, and PoE Support Features

The Vitesse family of PHYs offers GPIO pins that can be used to provide glueless interfaces to SFP slots. For example, these pins can be used to implement a simple two-wire serial interface multiplexer for interfacing multiple SFP ports or can be used to directly drive SFP control signals.

The devices’ GPIO pins can also be used to increase system integration and lower system cost in Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) enabled designs for applications such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP), by having the pins communicate with a PoE manager using a two-wire serial interface.

Availability and Pricing

Vitesse’s single, quad, and octal GbE PHYs are available in production quantities. For pricing information, please contact your local sales representative.

About the Gigabit Ethernet Products Division

Vitesse is the pre-eminent supplier to OEMs designing tomorrow’s new wave of broadband products. With the industry’s most far-reaching offering of tightly integrated, ultra-low power Gigabit Ethernet devices, and a staunch commitment to Gigabit Ethernet, the company continues to set the pace of innovation across market sectors.

About Vitesse

Vitesse designs, develops, and markets a diverse portfolio of high-performance, cost-competitive semiconductor solutions for communications and storage networks worldwide. Engineering excellence and dedicated customer service distinguish Vitesse as an industry leader in Gigabit Ethernet LAN, Ethernet-over-SONET, Advanced Switching, Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI, Optical Transport, and other applications. Vitesse innovation empowers customers to deliver superior products for Enterprise, Access, Metro, and Core applications. Additional company and product information is available at www.vitesse.com.

Vitesse is a registered trademark and HawX, SimpliPHY, Audio Media Sense, and VeriPHY are trademarks in the United States and/or other jurisdictions of Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation. All other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders.

Note to media: For additional information on Vitesse Gigabit Ethernet solutions: http://www.vitesse.com/ethernet