
High-speed line cards reemerge
When the telecommunications sector crashed more than three years ago, development of 10- and 40-Gbit/second line cards was dropped in favor of slower designs that provided a migration path from existing OC-3 and OC-12 equipment to OC-48-class speeds. But with OC-48 now proliferating and Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gbit Ethernet starting to gain hold in metro markets, designers are once again building high-speed line cards that deliver 10 Gbits and beyond.

Next-gen line cards take careful design
Any-port provisioning optimizes bandwidth
Routes to increased integration
Modular approach cuts cost at 10 Gbits/s

90-nm FPGAs handle 10-Gbit traffic management tasks
Multi-Database Lookups Solve Search Bus Dilemmas
SoC integration changes face of high-speed line cards
Understanding jitter issues in OC-48/OC-192 line cards