PMC offers second generation of HyPHY metro OTN devices

May 30, 2012
PMC (NASDAQ:PMCS) has announced sampling of the second generation of the company’s HyPHY Optical Transport Network (OTN) processor family for designs targeted at metro applications. The new chips include the HyPHY 20Gflex and the HyPHY 10Gflex.

PMC (NASDAQ:PMCS) has announced sampling of the second generation of the company’s HyPHY Optical Transport Network (OTN) processor family for designs targeted at metro applications. The new chips include the HyPHY 20Gflex and the HyPHY 10Gflex.

Both devices are ODU0-channelized metro OTN processors that support the newly approved OIF-compliant OTN-over-Packet Fabric system interface. The PM5450 HyPHY 20Gflex delivers what PMC asserts is the industry’s highest density with 16xSFP and 2x10G XFP/SFP+ interfaces along with what the company describes as “Any-Port, Any-Rate, and Any-Service” flexibility for the transport of Carrier Ethernet, IP/MPLS, SONET/SDH, SAN, and video over an OTN infrastructure. This flexibility derives from the use of an independent, rate-agile SERDES with integrated PLLs that enables operation from a single reference. This design eliminates external timing components and thus reduces cost, power, and footprint, PMC says.

The PM5456 HyPHY 10Gflex offers similar capabilities for lower-density applications.

Common features of the two devices include:

  • Transparent, semi-transparent, and MAC-terminated transport of Ethernet, with onboard Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet PCS/MACs, including support for Timing over Packet (IEEE 1588v2), Synchronous Ethernet, and Ethernet Link OAM (IEEE 802.3ah).
  • Interoperability with OIF OTN-over-packet-fabric standard via PMC’s OTN Phase Signaling Algorithm and Constant Bit Rate Interface technology.
  • Integrated ODU0/ODUflex-granular framing, mapping, and switching. This includes up to 40G of OTN framing and 100G of OTN switching in a single chip, with the industry’s first on-board support for PTP (IEEE 1588v2) over OTN.
  • Single-chip for DWDM muxponder and transponder, as well as OTN switching modes of operation.
  • Integration of supplementary OTN framers, monitoring, and alarm insertion points to enable flexible protection switching schemes, such as Sub-Network Connection Protection (SNCP) for point-to-point, ring, or mesh topologies.
  • Flexible Interlaken and XAUI packet interface.

PMC is confident that the market is ready for chips with these capabilities and densities.

“With commitment to mass deployment of OTN-switched networks in critical geographies like China, it’s evident that OTN solves the industry’s need to profitably build out scalable metro transport networks,” said Babak Samimi, vice president of marketing and applications for PMC’s Communications Products Division. “With our purpose-built HyPHY Flex ASSPs, PMC is enabling our customers to consolidate their line cards and bring a new class of OTN products to market that is optimized for transporting a multitude of packet services at the lowest total cost of ownership.”

“Metro transport networks are quickly evolving towards scalable OTN architectures in order to handle the growth in packet services,” confirmed Zhang Chengliang, deputy chief engineer, Beijing Research Institute, China Telecom. “Network operators need multiservice metro OTN equipment that can address the wide range of OTN-switched and lambda-switched network deployments that are ongoing globally.”

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