5 September 2002 -- Chipmaker ThreeFive Photonics, Houten, The Netherlands, has launched the second member of its Argo range of multiwavelength receivers, the Argo A4D10.
The A4D10 is an integrated multiwavelength receiver with four channels of 10Gbit/s capacity each. The company claims that it beats equivalent hybrid and discrete solutions in terms of footprint, pricing and ease of assembly, and that it will allow network systems OEMs to increase their network capacity economically.
Wouter Deelman, CEO of ThreeFive Photonics, said, "We have introduced our second product only six months after the first, which demonstrates that we made the right choice when we decided to outsource the manufacturing."
The Argo A4D10 multiwavelength receiver addresses the demands of system integrators and OEMs needing to provide high-capacity interconnections in metropolitan networks. With four channels at 10Gbit/s the new multiwavelength receiver offers a fourfold capacity increase over its predecessor without requiring any additional space.
"At the higher bitrate of 10Gbit/s, crosstalk between the channels becomes the critical factor", says Chretien Herben, ThreeFive's CTO. "We have made it a point to deal with that challenge by refining the design of the original 4-channel 2.5Gbit/s chip and package, completely in line with our product roadmap.
"While the A4D2.5 chip was packaged in a 14-pin butterfly package, A4D10 comes in a 26-pin package of the same dimensions with a coplanar RF output. The fact that we have been able to realise a satisfying performance at 10Gbit/s proves that we are on track to our final goal: a complete telecommunication subsystem on a single chip."
The new chip will be available to selected customers for testing and evaluation in the first half of 2003. Samples of Argo are introduced at a competitive price that is equivalent to the volume price for the current market solution consisting of separate components.