Hybrid SOCs Bridge Gap Between LAN And WAN Solutions

A pair of new ICs in the firm's family of field-programmable systems chips provide flexible line interface for 10-Gb Ethernet optical networks. The devices—a 10-Gbit Ethernet line interface and an 8-channel, 1.25/2.5/3.125 Gbit/s serializer-deserializer transceiver—combine FPGAs with standard cell logic on the same chip to provide design flexibility and high performance in an economical silicon solutions. The chips—-the ORLl10G and the ORT82G5—provide data networking equipment designers with customizable, protocol-independent interfaces to high-speed optical transport facilities used in 10-Gb Ethernet-based LAN, WAN, and metro area network deployments.
The ORLl10G is a line interface chip that incorporates a 10-Gbit serial bus interface to optical transponders by combining standard cell logic with 400k gates of programmable logic for customer-specific IP. The ORT82G5 is a serializer-deserializer transceiver that incorporates eight 10-Gbit attachment unit interface-compliant serializer and deserializer channels in standard logic, each operating at 1.25, 2.5, or 3.125 Gb/s and together providing aggregate of 20 Gb/s along with 600k gates of programmable logic.
Both chips are implemented in the firms' ORCA Series 4 FPGA technology and provide the physical coding sublayer interface for the proposed IEEE 802.3ae 10-Gb/s serial LAN physical layer. Pricing in lots of 50,000 is $195.00 each for the ORLl10G-680PBGAM 10-Gb Ethernet line interface and $365 each for the ORT82G5-600LBGA SerDes transceiver.