Blaze Network Products Inc., an optical networking subsystem company, announced it has joined the XENPAK Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group to supply the industry with 10 Gigabit Ethernet devices defined by the MSA.
The XENPAK MSA, announced by Agere and Agilent in March of 2001, supports IEEE 10 Gigabit Ethernet implementations, and specifies a uniform form factor, size, connector type and electrical pin-outs. All companies affiliated with the MSA expect to independently develop and market 10 Gigabit Ethernet transceivers based on this MSA.
Blaze, a provider of Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) optical devices, will introduce the Blaze Afterburner-XGSX-02, an 850nm-CWDM XENPAK MSA module in Q3 of this year. The MSA covers all transceiver types capable of supporting 10-Gigabit Ethernet functionality. The transceiver modules defined by this MSA are 36 millimeters (mm) (1.5 inches) wide, 121 mm (4.8 inches) long, and 17.4 mm (0.7 inches) high.
The specified dimensions will allow eight devices to be mounted on typical line cards. The transceivers will be front-panel-pluggable devices, connecting to a host circuit board in the "Z" plane through a board-mounted card-edge connector. The electrical input/output is based on the four-wire XAUI, a 10Gb attachment init interface. The optical interface will be a standard SC duplex fiber optic connector.
Blaze has been shipping a "Y" axis pluggable 10Gb module, the Afterburner-XGSX-01, since early March. At the recent N+I 2001 conference in Las Vegas, this module performed live at the Blaze booth.
Member companies are expecting to ship 10-Gigabit Ethernet transceivers based on this MSA later this year.
About Blaze Network Products:
Blaze Network Products develops and manufactures cost-effective, next-generation optical networking products. For more information, visit www.BlazeNP.com.