Marvell Alaska C 88X5111 100GbE gearbox chip offers MLG support

Communications semiconductor developer Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) has expanded its Alaska C line of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) devices with the Alaska C 88X5111. The new 100GbE gearbox chip features integrated Multilink Gearbox (MLG) 2.0 functionality.

Marvell expects the Alaska C 88X5111 to support the physical layer functional requirements of designs across a variety of media, including single-mode and multimode optical modules, copper backplanes, and passive and active copper direct attach cables. These include 100G-LR4 and SR4 optics, 100G-KR4 backplanes, and 100G-CR4 applications. The integrated MLG 2.0 capabilities also will enable the 88X5111 to support switch ASICs with 25-Gbps I/Os in designs that support 10GbE and 40GbE ports, company sources say.

The 88X5111 line interface is fully compliant with IEEE 802.3BJ and supports Reed Solomon Forward Error Correction (RS-FEC). Other features of the 28-nm, 17x17-mm device include:

• Long reach line serializer/deserializer (SerDes) capable of compensating an insertion loss of up to 30 dB without FEC
• Integrated IEEE auto-negotiation and training protocol
• Fully autonomous equalizer adaptation.
  

The device is sampling to Marvell's customers and will be sold as a standalone PHY, as well as with Marvell switches.

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