Vitesse offers 11-port Gb Ethernet switch

MANHASSET, NY -- Vitesse Semiconductor has introduced an 11-port Gigabit Ethernet switch targeted at low-power industrial Ethernet and enterprise applications.

The VSC7414 dissipates a total of 1.6W, which according to Vitesse, is 75 percent lower than the other competitive devices. The chip is optimized for power-sensitive enterprise router applications and is the latest device from Vitesse to include its VeriTime IEEE1588v2 technology.

“Similar to carrier networks, enterprise networks are converging on Ethernet,” said Uday Mudoi, director of product marketing at Vitesse, in a statement. “This raises the importance of IEEE1588v2 network timing as the data center becomes packet-based.”

Industry analysts forecast IEEE1588v2 to be the dominant synchronization technology for mobile networks by 2015. This precise timing synchronization method is also finding use in electrical substations and power automation networks.

VeriTime is already widely adopted by major OEMs as a low-cost upgrade to meet 4G/LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) requirements, according to Vitesse.

As service providers adopt new mobile access technologies such as TD-LTE and LTE-A to accommodate this massive traffic growth stringent packet timing requirements are needed. IEEE1588v2 is forecasted to become the most widely deployed packet synchronization standard worldwide, providing synchronization to over a million cell sites in live commercial service by the end of 2015.

“Sub-10 nanosecond accurate timing is essential for operation of TD-LTE and LTE-Advanced networks which will bring Gigabit broadband connectivity to mobile devices,” according to Chris Nicoll, principal analyst, mobility at ACG Research.

Vitesse claimed that it  recently reported network performance results to the ITU-T documenting VeriTime’s <3ns per hop accuracy over a nine-hop IEEE1588v2 Transparent Clock (TC) network, making it the industry’s only solution that fulfills TD-LTE and LTE-Advanced requirements in real-world tests today.

VeriTime’s IEEE1588v2 TC technology eliminates the need for discrete timing FPGAs, processors, and software timing synchronization solutions in the cost-sensitive edge and access equipment. VeriTime supports both Boundary Clock (BC) and lower cost TC implementations of the IEEE1588v2 standard.

“VeriTime represents Vitesse’s fifth generation of IEEE1588v2 IP and is a significant architectural advancement towards providing GPS-grade timing over the network without sacrificing systems margin,” said Martin Nuss, chief technology officer for Vitesse. “Based on our incumbency with dozens of telecom OEMs, VeriTime is quickly becoming the de facto solution in mobile networks.”