Customizable Fibre Channel Devices Offer Design Flexibility

Said to be the industry's first customizable high-speed Fibre Channel devices, the QuickFC family offers up to 2.5 Gbps throughput. Based on Finisar Corp.'s gigabit-rate technology, QuickFC devices are well-suited for designs that require customization to the standard Fibre Channel protocol, such as applications for proprietary storage area networks and RAID architectures.
QuickFC products provide an integrated, configurable Fibre Channel encoder/decoder (8b/10b) interface combined with 32,000 system gates of programmable logic. These include 22 blocks (25,344 bits) of dual-port RAM that can be configured as RAM, ROM, or FIFOs. Access time is less than 5ns, and the FIFOs operate at more than 160 MHz.
Designed for use in conjunction with industry-standard gigabit SERDES transmitter-receiver chips, the QuickFC family supports standard Fibre Channel performance rates of 1.062 Gbps (single rate) and 2.125 Gbps (double rate) with 2.1Gbps throughput. For embedded applications that require even higher performance, the family will support up to 2.5 Gbps throughput.
The programmable logic portion of the device is based on the company's patented technology called ViaLink. ViaLink's performance allows designers to implement 250 MHz 16-bit counters and 275 MHz data paths. The devices also contain up to 271 user-programmable I/Os operating at 3.3V, with 5V tolerance.
QuickFC devices are expected to be available in the third quarter, 2000. They are supported by QuickWorks software version 9.0. Prices start at less than $80 each/10,000 for the QL80FC-A. QuickFC Reference Design kits are also available starting at $1,595.