Joint Research Project

BATM ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED
12 October 1999 
                               
                 BATM Advanced Communications
              in joint research project with CERN
 
CERN,  the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, is building  a
major  new  particle accelerator, the Large Hadron  Collider,  LHC,
which  is due to come into operation in 2005.  Experiments  at  the
LHC  will  produce enormous amounts of data which must be collected
and  processed  in real time.  This necessitates the  use  of  very
large  high performance computer networks capable of moving  up  to
100  Gbytes/s  of  data between several thousand data  sources  and
processing  elements.   Investigations  into  how  such  levels  of
performance  might  be  achieved  have  been  the  subject  of  R&D
activities at CERN for several years.
 
Joint research into scalable Ethernet switches and routers is being
carried out by CERN and BATM, a leading LAN equipment manufacturer.
This  work is supported by the SWIFT project, part of the  European
Union's  Information  Society  Technologies  (IST)  Programme,  and
builds on the work of CERN in previous EU projects.  The aim is  to
develop  a  new generation of large scalable Ethernet switches  and
routers which will be important components in the evolution of  the
Internet.
 
A  prototype Gigabit Ethernet switch has been developed jointly  by
CERN  and BATM and tested with several applications.  It forms  the
basis  of  BATM's  new  Titan T6 range of products  which  will  be
introduced  during Telecom 99 in Geneva this week.  The switch  can
support  up  to  128 Gigabit Ethernet ports or 1024  Fast  Ethernet
ports  and has sophisticated quality of service (QoS) features  for
delivering voice, video and data together.
 
Professor Bob Dobinson, who has led the R&D on the CERN side for  a
number of years, said:
'I  believe it is strongly in CERN's interest to work closely  with
industry  to  prepare  for our new LHC experiments.   The  European
Union's IST program offers an excellent way of doing this.  It's  a
win-win situation'.
 
Ofer Harpak, Chief Technology Officer of BATM, commented:
'We  are  very excited about the ground-breaking research  we  have
been  conducting with CERN.  It has enabled us to develop  the  new
Titan  T6  switch in a live environment.  This collaboration  shows
the  benefits of academia and industry working together to  develop
vastly superior technologies for the next century.'
 
                                                            
For further information please contact:
 
Shore Capital
Graham  Shore                                         0171 734 7293
 
Ludgate  Communications                               0171 253 2252
Edward Macquisten
 
http://www.batm.com/