10-Gb Serial Transceiver Integrates Equalizer

The BCM8703 boasts of being the industry’s first single-chip serial 10-Gb Ethernet and Fiber Channel transceiver with an integrated 10-Gb equalizer. The transceiver is also said to reduce power consumption and footprint requirements by 50% compared to alternative devices. The device employs the company's proprietary EyeOpener equalization technology that remove inter-symbol interference (ISI) on the incoming data stream. This reportedly results in reliable data transfers over longer trace lengths and low-cost PCB materials. The transmitter portion of the transceiver exhibits a jitter generation of 5 ps (peak to peak) and the receiver side includes a limiting amplifier that maintains input sensitivity to 30 mV (single ended). Other features of the BCM8703 include integrated SerDes functions, clock and data recovery, a clock multiplication unit, four-channel 3.125-Gb/s XAUI, PCS 64B/66B scrambler/descrambler, and an XGXS 8B/10B error detection encoder/decoder. The chip operates on 1.8V with a power consumption of 1.5W and is available in a 13 x 13-mm PBGA package. Price is $235 each/1,000. BROADCOM CORP., Irvine, CA. (949) 450-8700.