Velio Communications, Inc. announced a complete family of high-performance, low-power SerDes (serializer/deserializer) backplane transceivers, which can deliver up to 3.125Gbps over eight full-duplex lanes for an aggregate 50Gbps on a single device. The octal 3.125Gbps SerDes device consumes two watts of power, less power than current quad 1.25Gbps SerDes devices. Velio offers a compelling intra-system signaling solution for designers of high-performance networking equipment, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet systems and OC-192 SONET/SDH optical systems, as well as SAN systems built around the InfiniBand and Fibre Channel standards.
Velio's innovations in signal integrity enable systems to be built with more than a meter of FR4 printed circuit board (PCB) trace length, plus two backplane connectors. This more than doubles the objective described in XAUI (10 Gigabit eXtended Attachment Unit Interface), the emerging 10 Gbps Ethernet standard, which targets the distance objective across a PCB to 50cm and a connector. System designers looking to utilize the multilane 3.125Gbps technique can now design new systems or extend the life of existing systems that employ electrical backplanes.
The VC1000 family of SerDes is the first product family announced by Velio. Based on standard 0.18 micron CMOS process, this family includes quad and octal lane versions with throughput performance ranging from 1Gbps up to 3.125Gbps full duplex, and low power consumption. The serial cores inside the SerDes consume 100mW of power for a transmit and receive lane pair. It consists of five devices in two packages. The Octal devices are packaged in a 25 mm, 380 pin thermally optimized BGA. The Quad devices are packaged in a 17 mm, 220 pin BGA.
VC1003 is a 3.125 Gbps 8-lane Octal and the VC1013 is a 3.125Gbps 4-lane Quad device, both targeted for 10 Gigabit Ethernet and backplane applications. Under typical load conditions, the VC1003 Octal consumes only 2.1 watts of power.
VC1002 is a 2.5 Gbps 8-lane Octal and the VC1012 is a 2.5 Gbps 4-lane Quad device, both targeted for SONET and InfiniBand backplane applications. Under a typical load, the VC1002 Octal SerDes consumes only 1.9 Watts of power, which is an eighth of comparable solutions targeted at SONET applications.
VC1001 is a 1.25Gbps 8-lane Octal SerDes targeted for Gigabit Ethernet and backplane applications. The VC1001 Octal consumes only 1.5 watts under typical load conditions. This is one third of the power consumed by currently shipping devices at this data rate. VC1001 enables the next generation of Gigabit Ethernet switches that require higher port densities while containing power requirements. VC1001 also enables redeployment of existing backplane designs that are consuming a great deal of power and have limited signal integrity support.
The Velio SerDes family began sampling in December 2000, and evaluation boards are available now. Production quantities of the devices are available next quarter. Pricing of the VC1003 Octal 3.125Gbps SerDes starts at $136 per 1,000 units.
About Velio Communications:
Velio Communications is a provider of silicon devices designed to solve the intra-system communications challenges of optical carrier equipment.