Altera's Stratix V FPGAs break through performance barriers

SAN JOSE, USA: Altera Corp. announced the industry's first single-chip, dual 100G transponder solution implemented in a 28-nm high-performance Stratix V FPGA. Altera's solution integrates two independent 100G transponders into a single FPGA, enabling optical equipment manufacturers to keep pace with network performance and bandwidth demands while lowering capital costs.

A live hardware demonstration of Altera's dual 100G transponder solution will be shown in its booth #2825 at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference 2012 (OFC/NFOEC) in Los Angeles the week of March 5.

The growing number of Internet-enabled devices today is resulting in an order of magnitude increase in network bandwidth demands and is driving the need for large-scale network-upgrades. Optical Transport Networks (OTN) allows carriers to scale quickly and support the tremendous growth of traffic on their networks. Altera's OTN solutions enable carriers and service providers to increase the number of optical links across the transport layer and support higher data rates across a variety of applications (voice, video, storage).

Altera's single-chip, dual 100G transponder simplifies the move by carrier and service providers to higher-density 100G transport by providing a fully integrated standards-based solution. The solution leverages the enhanced performance of Stratix V FPGAs and industry-leading OTN IP to increase the density of 100G transport solutions beyond the capability of any other ASSP- or FPGA-based solution in the industry. Altera's latest FPGA-based OTN offerings include 28-nm high-performance silicon optimized for transport applications, industry-leading high-speed transceivers and OTN system IP.

Demo of a single-chip, dual 100G transponder at OFC
Altera's demonstration at OFC/NFOEC leverages a single Stratix V GX FPGA and shows two independent transponders carrying live 100G traffic over optical fiber. Altera will also be showcasing its latest innovations in OTN IP and 28-nm FPGA technology at the show. The company will share information on key building blocks that enable system and equipment manufacturers to develop higher density and lower power optical networks for tomorrow's communication systems.

"Altera is committed to supporting optical transport networks with our leading-edge FPGAs, best-in-class transceiver technology and OTN IP," said Dan Mansur, senior director of strategic marketing in Altera's Communications Business Unit. "Our production-grade, single-chip 100G transponder is deployed today in top-tier carrier networks. Now with our dual 100G transponder solution we are able to deliver density that is unachievable with current solutions and puts us on the path to support data rates of 400G and beyond."