NetLogic Microsystems announces industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet PHY/SerDes family of products in 40nm

OFC/NFOEC 2011, LOS ANGELES & SANTA CLARA, USA: NetLogic Microsystems Inc. announced that it will be showcasing the industry’s broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of 40nm-based, quad-channel 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) PHY/SerDes family of products.

NetLogic Microsystems’ family of 10/40/100 GbE PHY/SerDes products comprises pin-compatible packages, features different levels of integration for seamless migration of data centers from 10GbE to 40GbE and 100GbE throughputs, as well as serial data transmission over a wide variety of backplanes at 10GbE and 40GbE. The product portfolio offers a wide variety of industry-leading interfaces to address the broadest set of data center applications:

XAUI/RXAUI/XFI to SFI/SR/LR/Direct-attached Copper
CPPI/XLPPI to CAUI/XLAUI
XAUI/RXAUI/XFI to 10GBASE-KR
XLAUI to 10GBASE-KR4
XLAUI/CAUI to MLD

Minimizing power consumption and the increasing adoption of direct-attached copper links (10GBASE-CX1) have become two of the most important trends in new data center applications as both of these features have a significant impact on the overall cost of deployment. NetLogic Microsystems' 10/40/100 GbE PHY/SerDes family of devices is optimized for both these features, with an industry-leading power consumption of approximately 1/2 Watt per channel.

Each of the devices has its own integrated on-chip power distribution network which significantly simplifies board design and, in conjunction with the ultra low-power dissipation of the PHY device, makes it one of the most attractive 10/40/100G PHY/SerDes offerings on the market today. The transmitter and receiver designs are also conducive to extended reaches of the increasingly popular 10GBASE-CX1 direct-attached copper links with up to 15m on all the standard SFP+ connectorized twin-ax cables in the market.

“We are happy to have the industry's broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet PHY, as well as the industry's first dual-mode, quad-port 10Gbps PHY solution that supports the 40GbE and 100GbE applications,” said Stefanos Sidiropoulos, vice president of Physical Layer Products at NetLogic Microsystems.

“Besides designing the lowest power devices, we have also integrated a host of additional features, such as support for Energy Efficient Ethernet, broadcast MDIO functions and support for protection switching between 10 Gigabit channels. We are confident these devices represent the ideal combination of features for the emerging 10GbE applications.”

The 40GbE/100GbE versions of the device exceed the electrical parameters of the nPPI interface as defined in P8023.ba Annex 86A and are fully compliant with the CR4/CR10 PMDs as defined in P802.3ba Clause 85. The 10GbE versions offer high levels of functionality with dedicated pins for SFP+ management and control, dedicated general purpose I/Os, clock synthesizers and highly flexible and programmable Ethernet frame generators and checkers, BER calculators, link margining tools and SONET-grade jitter performance, all in a low pin-count package ideally suited for SFP+/QSFP+ designs.

In addition, the backplane version of the device is the industry's first announced product capable of supporting both the 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GBASE-KR4) and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GBASE-KR) standards in the same device. This provides unprecedented scalability for customers to develop a wide range of equipment with backplanes that can support multiple transmission speeds using a single part number.

NetLogic Microsystems is also currently sampling the next-generation of PHY/SerDes with even higher levels of integration, incorporating electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) circuitry for 10GBASE-LRM standards, along with support for IEEE1588 time stamping and MACsec in pin-compatible packages in the future.