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Members of the Advanced Switching Interconnect Special Interest Group yesterday rolled out their first silicon and board-level products. These products will become the building blocks for telecom and datacom hardware providers to begin building standardized backplane architectures that support advanced switching.

As switch fabrics have become more distributed, manufacturers need an internal data management alternative to Ethernet and fabrics built on custom ASICs or vendor proprietary approaches, said Rajeev Kumar, advanced switching initiatives manager for Intel. The ASI technology is built on open standards, such as PCI Express and Advanced TCA, he said.

Companies announcing ASI products include Agilent, which announced an AdvancedTCA probe; Denali, which said it is cooperating with GDA Technologies on a comprehensive IP platform for ASI design; IDT, which revealed a prototype for internetworking of the common switch interface protocol into ASI; Intel, which disclosed technical information on its AdvancedTCA-based development platform; StarGen, which showed off its ASI-based Merlin switch; and Xyratex, which announced its first ASI products for OEM use.

Commercial products using the ASI capabilities are expected to hit the market in about a year, Kumar said.