Alvesta (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) both touted the small package sizes of their respective modules, though the products were designed for different applications.

Alvesta made its debut at OFC with the Model 3100, a 10-Gbit/s, full-duplex optical transceiver designed especially for short-reach applications (300 meters or less) in large switches and routers. Toshiba introduced the TOTR370M, a full-featured 10-Gbit/s transponder module with a small (4.5 x 3.5 x 0.53-inch) footprint.

Chip vendors touted their process skills. Infineon Technologies Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) launched a monolithic silicon germanium transceiver for OC-192 SDH/Sonet systems. Broadcom Corp. (Irvine) announced that it's sampling a 0.13-micron CMOS quad gigabit copper transceiver for deployment to the desktop, with power dissipation of less than 1 watt per port.

And Mindspeed Technologies (Newport Beach, Calif.) maintained the higher-density drumbeat with the CX28335, a single-chip, 12-port line interface unit (LIU) for use in digital loop carriers, digital subscriber line access multiplexers, multiservice access concentrators and optical add/drop multiplexers, all of which are used to aggregate lower-speed electrical network connections into higher-speed optical links.

Key to the communications market is the ability to deliver ever more bandwidth from smaller boxes that consume less power and generate less heat than their predecessors. Alvesta's Model 3100, for example, operates from a single 3.3-volt supply, has a 15.5 x 34.6-mm footprint, consumes less than 1 W and is priced from $600 in sample (single-unit) quantities.

"Fiber optics has delivered reliable, high-bandwidth connections for long-haul applications for years," said president and chief executive officer Brian Button. "We're delivering a very small, power-efficient 10-Gbit/s optical transceiver at an attractive price, and we're doing it using a patented packaging design that can be reliably produced in high volumes."

The module is designed to outperform copper cabling for high-speed intrashelf and inter-rack connectivity. It offers four 2.5-Gbit/s channels in a design that Button said lowers the signaling rate to the printed-circuit board, simplifies board design and helps reduce electromagnetic interference. Using parallel optics based on commercially available, 850-nanometer vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, it meets the latest Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) specification for OC-192 very short-reach communications (OIF2000.074.4) as well as Infiniband architecture specifications.

Button said the startup's staff has extensive experience resolving the board-layout, EMI-shielding and mechanical-design challenges associated with high-performance interconnect solutions.

Toshiba's transponder also operates from small supplies (3.3, 5 or -5.2 V) but is designed for use in intermediate synchronous optical network (Sonet) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) applications. Its $25,000 entry-level price leaves room for customizing, the company said (see photo below).

Jay Heinecke, director of business development for the optoelectronic products unit, said the module incorporates a transmitter based on a 1,550-nm electroabsorptive modulated laser with a PIN photodiode-based receiver, including the electronics required to multiplex and demultiplex 16:1 622-Mbit/s channels.

The transponder is the first in a planned family of 10-Gbit/s optical components, Heinecke said, and "a key stepping stone to our future OC-768 (40-Gbit/s) products." The module is specified for operation from -5 degrees C to 70 degrees C. It should be ready for sampling in the second quarter and in production by the end of the year.

Infineon's FOA6100 transceiver chip, designed for use in optoelectronic modules like the ones offered by Alvesta and Toshiba, handles the serializing/deserializing (or multiplexing/demultiplexing) tasks that heretofore required two chips. As a result, it requires less space and consumes less power.

Helmut Vogler, vice president of fiber optics and high-speed ICs, said the 1.5-W, 10-Gbit/s device performs parallel-to-serial and serial-to-parallel mux/demux functions. It integrates a 622-Mbit/s reference clock, operates from a single 3.3-V supply and complies with Bellcore, International Telecommunications Union and OIF standards definitions. Vogler added that the use of SiGe technology enables a board-space reduction of approximately 50 percent, along with a significant reduction in operating cost.

The transceiver contains an integrated clock multiplier unit with phase-locked loop (PLL) synthesizer; a 10-GHz voltage-controlled oscillator on the serializer side; and a clock- and data-recovery PLL and VCO on the deserializer.

It features a low-jitter, high-speed current-mode logic transmitter serial output and a 16-bit, low-voltage differential-signaling receiver parallel-output interface, which complies with OIF requirements. Infineon has integrated a byte-alignment and frame-detection unit based on the Sonet protocol, and line and diagnostic loop-back modes.

Infineon's recently introduced FOA1100 high-gain transimpedance amplifier and FOA2100 low-power laser diode driver device are designed for use with the transceiver to build Sonet transmission systems. The three-chip solution is said to cut power dissipation by more than 60 percent compared with alternative solutions that require up to five chips. The transceiver is available in die form or in a ball-grid array, the latter priced at $400 in 50,000-unit quantities. Samples are due in April Amid the many 10-Gbit/s offerings, vendors are also working hard to make lower-speed communication more cost-effective. After a year-long effort with its foundry partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Broadcom is sampling the 0.13-micron BCM5404 quad gigabit copper transceiver, which represents the fourth generation of products based on its Gigabit DSP design.

The chip facilitates the deployment of Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth to the desktop by doubling port density, lowering system cost and reducing power dissipation to under 1 W per port, said Marty Colombatto, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's networking-business unit. It lets designers create 24- and 48-port Gigabit Ethernet (1-Gbit/s) switches and routers that occupy the same space as fast Ethernet models (100 Mbits/s). Such migration would ease congestion on local-area networks.

Priced at $150 in limited sample quantities, the transceiver incorporates 10- and 100-Mbit/s and 1-Gbit/s ability with standards-based autonegotiation for compatibility with Ethernet network equipment operating over legacy Category 5 copper cable plants. This so-called "Ethernet@Wirespeed" technology enables equipment used with the chip to autonegotiate to the maximum speed possible over an impaired cable plant, Broadcom said-regardless of the maximum speed advertised by the end equipment.

The chip packs a transceiver digital signal processor engine delivering more than 1 trillion operations/second, as well as mixed-signal circuits. It's designed to exceed IEEE noise-cancellation and transmit-jitter specifications. Each port supports Reduced Gigabit Media Independent Interface and Reduced Ten Bit Interface, in addition to standard GMII and TBI interfaces.

The reduced-version interfaces require less than half the number of pins to interface to a media-access controller or switch ASIC. Colombatto said that for a 48-port system, using RGMII instead of GMII saves 624 ASIC I/O pins, which significantly cuts overall system cost and board-design complexity.

Also touting faster speed, higher density and lower power was Mindspeed Technologies, the Internet infrastructure business of Conexant Systems Inc., which launched the CX28335 single-chip, 12-port, 330-mW/port line interface unit at OFC. Raouf Halim, who will become chief executive officer of Mindspeed when it spins out as a separate company, said each channel in the device is composed of separate transmit and receive sections with a common reference clock and dedicated power and ground connections, which eliminate crosstalk and preserve optimum speed and reliability for aggregated connections, he said.

The addition of 1:1 coupling transformers, termination resistors and supply-bypass capacitors is said to create a complete solution.

The LIU can aggregate 12 T3, E3 or synchronous transport signals into an OC-12 (622-Mbit/s) or OC-48 (2.5-Gbit/s) connection on a single line card. It's sampling now, with volume production expected in the second quarter. Packaged in a 35-mm taped ball-grid array, the LIU is priced at $205 in OEM quantities, typically 10,000 or more.

The 2001 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibit was sponsored by the Optical Society of America and IEEE.

COMPANY CONTACTS

Alvesta Inc.
(866) 919-2828
www.alvesta.com
EETInfo No. 630

Broadcom Corp.
(949) 450-8700
www.Broadcom.com
EETInfo No. 631

Infineon Technologies Inc.
(800) 777-4363 or
(408) 501-6000
www.infineon.com
EETInfo No. 632

Mindspeed Technologies
(877) 908-5683
www.mindspeed.com
EETInfo No. 633

Toshiba America Electronic
Components Inc.
(800) 879-4963
www.toshiba.com/taec
EETInfo No. 634