Broadcom high-density 10G-EPON optical line terminal chips
Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM) has closed the loop in its 10G-EPON chip offering. The new BCM5553x family of 10G-EPON dual-, quad-, and octal-port single-chip 10G-EPON optical line terminal (OLT) devices now give Broadcom a complete 10G-EPON chip family when paired with the company’s previously released BCM55030 SoC for 10G-EPON optical network units (ONUs).
The family supports the full range of relevant EPON specifications, including China Telecom 3.0, SIEPON P1904.1/D3.0, and CableLabs DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON (DPoE) – and, of course, IEEE 802.3av.
Unlike the company’s 1-Gbps EPON OLT devices, the new BCM5553x chips require the companion BCM88350 family of integrated single-chip traffic manager/packet processors. Nevertheless, the chips combined offer 200 Gbps of traffic management and packet processing. While the company is not releasing power consumption details, Broadcom sources told Lightwave the chips were designed to enable OLT cards with a total profile of 100 W.
Other features include:
- Simultaneous 10G symmetric and asymmetric operation with 1.25 Gbps/2.5 Gbps co-existence
- 8x10G IEEE 803.3av-compatible MACs with integrated 10G and 1G burst-mode OLT SerDes
- Support of up to 512 subscribers per 10G port with up to four classes of service per subscriber
- Network synchronization support for mobile backhaul over PON (1588 v2, ToD/1PPS, SyncE
- Support for extended-reach PON up to 100 km
- Support for DOCSIS Mediation Layer (DML) middleware for Cable MSO applications
The Broadcom sources said that interest in 10G-EPON is beginning to pick up, particularly in China. Market analysts appear to agree.
“In the Asia Pacific region and especially in China, major operators are investing in heavily in EPON, a trend we expect to continue throughout 2015. As focus increases on introducing subscribers to the new infrastructure, scalable and flexible 10G EPON OLT solutions such as Broadcom’s BCM5553x series of SoCs will play an important role in increasing adoption rates over the next three years,” offered Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, broadband access and video, Infonetics Research, via a Broadcom press release.
Broadcom has already begun sampling the devices. The company is offering a complete 8x10G-EPON reference design platform that includes the BCM55538 8x10G OLT, BCM88350 200 Gbps TM/PP and switch with connectivity options to Broadcom’s multi-core CPUs and knowledge-based processors (KBP). The BCM55030 10G symmetric ONU is also available for production designs immediately.
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