Transceiver IC Replaces Parallel Backplane With Serial Links

Capable of reducing hundreds of parallel backplane pins to a few serial connections, the 21Z01 OctalPHY transceiver is designed to boost the bandwidth and performance of Internet routers, enterprise and network switches, telecomm equipment, and more. And with its scaleable architecture, future generations of the chip will be able to keep up with advances in Internet technology more easily.The IC also reduces system power requirements by eliminating the banks of drivers needed for parallel connections. It recovers the timing clock from the serial data stream, eliminating the distance restrictions of conventionally clocked backplanes.The IC can convert a 160-bit wide parallel backplane operating at 125 MHz into 16 differential pair serial connections operating at up to 1.56 Gbps. Dissipating only 1.25W (typ.) with a 2.5V supply, the chip packs a clock synthesizer, 8B/10B encoder, clock recovery, serializer/deserializer, and a byte aligner. And it can be configured for use in Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel line cards.