Bypass Circuits Have Standalone Retimer

Expanding its family of Fibre Channel port bypass circuits, the VSC7124, -7127 and -7129 integrate all digital repeaters and retimers and are claimed to provide greater design flexibility than alternative devices for manufacturers of 1.0625-Gb/s JBODs and disk arrays. The devices steer Fibre Channel signals to disk drives, perform on-chip transmit termination, and offer 3.3V operation. For increased design flexibility, the devices can be cascaded together allowing the designer to match the number of PBCs to the Fibre Channel disk drives in the enclosure. If the number of disk drives exceeds 12, the VSC7148 with 16 PBCs and four Fibre timers can be used. Pricing starts at under $9 each/5,000.