The new funds, which will last until 2002, will serve to launch Xelerator, the company’s patented new range of products, and to expand operations in the American market. The company has developed 40Gbps network processors and traffic managers, that together builds a subsystem for IP routers. The processors are embedded in switchers and routers, which manage data traffic through metropolitan area networks (MAN), wireless area networks (WAN) and fixed networks.

“Our processors,” says Tomas Eklund, co-founder of Xelerated, “are fully programmable and perform forwarding plane protocols Ipv4, Ipv6 and MPLS. They can manage to add new functions, such as data filtering and traffic shaping, without losing in performance”.

Tasks performed by PISC (Packet Instruction Set Computer), Xelerator’s core building block, range from data classification, metering and statistics counting. Without compromising speed capability, the company claims that complex tasks such as filtering, multicasting, and link sharing can be run simultaneously. Potential customers are, for example, networking equipment vendors such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, Ericsson and Juniper.

Network processors are a new generation of components, to be found embedded in routers. Their task is to run the data traffic, directing the packets of bytes in the net to the final IP address. These components can be programmed to perform different kinds of decisions. The network processor market is a relatively embryonic sector, which according to estimates of US-based analysis firm Semico Research should reach $3.3 billion global in sales by 2005.

Xelerated, with a staff of 42, was founded in August 2000 by former Ericsson, Cisco, Lucent and LSI Logic engineers. Johan Börje, the company’s CEO, brings several years of experience in marketing and sales of routers for wireless networks at Ericsson. Other founders come from Switchcore and Net Insight, two Swedish network equipment manufacturers.