50-Gbps SFI-5 interface on Stratix II GX FPGAs

The folks at Altera have announced SERDES Framer Interface Level 5 (SFI-5) standard support in their Stratix II GX FPGAs with embedded transceivers, providing a 40- to 50-Gbps interface for high-performance optical communications applications.

The SFI-5 specification is a chip-to-chip standard that ensures interoperability between forward-error correction (FEC) and the framer, as well as from industry-leading optical transponder devices. Hardware tested to verify compliance to the SFI-5 standard, Stratix II GX FPGAs feature up to 20 high-speed serial transceiver channels that can operate at data rates between 600 Mbps and 6.375 Gbps, easily satisfying SFI-5 interface requirements.

The SFI-5 Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) specification was developed to provide an interface between the network processing devices and the optical transponder to enable higher bandwidths. The SFI-5 standard addresses network transport formats including OC-768, STM256, and OTN OTU-3.

In addition to supporting the SFI-5 standard, Altera Stratix II GX FPGAs are designed to deliver an extensive set of optical and electrical protocols with low power and industry-leading signal integrity, making them an ideal solution for use in all high-speed designs.

About Stratix II GX FPGAs
Featuring up to 20 transceiver channels operating from 600 Mbps to 6.375 Gbps, Altera's Stratix II GX FPGAs offer a high-performance, high-density solution to applications that require multi-gigabit serial I/O.

Altera says that its transceiver technology provides robust noise immunity and industry-leading jitter performance, while maintaining the lowest power consumption. Stratix II GX devices offer a complete solution supporting many serial protocols, including SerialLite II, XAUI, SONET/SDH, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Serial RapidIO, PCI Express, SMPTE 292M and SFI-5.

Production-qualified Stratix II GX FPGAs, with support for the SFI-5 protocol, are available now. For additional information about Stratix II GX FPGA SFI-5 protocol support, visit www.altera.com/sfi5. For general information about Altera Stratix II GX FPGAs, visit www.altera.com/stratix2gx.