XLOOM COMMUNICATIONS INTRODUCES THE FIRST COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE PHOTONIC INTEGRATED CHIP. XLOOM’S TECHNOLOGY TO BRING VLSI ECONOMIES OF SCALE TO THE OPTICS INDUSTRY TARGETING ETHERNET, FIBER CHANNEL AND INFINIBAND APPLICATIONS

Photonics West, San Jose, Calif. - January 26, 2005 – XLoom Communications, a pioneer in chip-scale opto-electric interconnects, demonstrated its leadership today at Photonics West, San Jose, introducing the industry’s first commercially available photonic integrated chip.

Introduced by Avner Badihi, XLoom’s CEO and co-founder, the opto-electric chip dubbed BlueFlame is a high speed transceiver slightly larger than a thumb’s finger nail that transmits over 40GB of data and is fabricated using standard semi-conductor processes. XLoom will be launching its first commercial product based on the BlueFlame next month. Aimed at data center high speed interconnect applications, the market for optical links in Ethernet alone is estimated by research firm Dell’Oro to reach $1 Billion in 2007 up from $200 Million in 2004.

Says Avner Badihi XLoom’s CEO: “Based on its dramatic impact for reducing size and cost, the BlueFlame - photonic integrated chip developed by XLoom, is aimed to serve the growing market demand for high-speed interconnect solutions in popular computing domains such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband as a cost-effective optics-based alternative, where copper is reaching its physical limits.”

Shai Gilboa the company’s COO and  co-founder says that: “The fabrication of a photonic chip using standard semi-conductor processes, brings to the opto-electric domain the same economies of scale that silicon based VLSI integration, introduced by Intel and others has brought to the computing industry. XLoom’s technology drives both size and cost down to where optics effectively becomes an alternative to copper high-speed interconnects, where copper is exhausted”.

About XLoom Communications

XLoom Communications, the leader in chip scale opto-electric interconnects, delivers low power, high-speed interconnect solutions for data center applications such as Ethernet, Infiniband and backplanes. XLoom’s solutions enable the cost effective alternative to copper interconnects in high-speed data center environments where the physical limitations of copper are deemed costly and ineffective. XLoom is based in Tel-Aviv and in the Bay Area.