2 October 2003 Mountain View, CA Lightwave -- High-density PHY and low-power CMOS solutions provider Aeluros today announced the general availability of the Puma AEL1002 Evaluation Kit, an integrated development and evaluation platform enabling the interoperability of the Puma AEL1002 device and XFP optical modules.
The Puma AEL1002 Evaluation Kit can be used to evaluate either the AEL1002 silicon itself or XFP optical modules. This provides an effective solution for XFP module manufacturers, who can make use of the kit as a demonstration vehicle for their modules at customer locations or can use the board as a low-cost test platform for quickly verifying a large quantity of optical modules. For system manufacturers intent on evaluating XFP modules from a variety of vendors, the Puma AEL1002 Evaluation Kit can provide a common environment for system-level testing and can validate interoperability between XFP modules and the Puma AEL1002 device. In addition, the built-in pattern generator/checker and BIST features and the integrated low-jitter high-speed clock output enable the Puma AEL1002 Evaluation Kit to serve as a low-cost clock and data source, say company representatives.
"The Puma AEL1002 device brought access to the 800-mW low-power advantages of Aeluros' 10 Gbit/sec-to-XAUI technology to the XFP-based 10-Gbit/sec market," explains Richard Egan, president and chief executive officer of Aeluros. "With the release of this Evaluation Kit, a demonstration platform and reference design for power constrained adapter cards is now readily available."
The Puma AEL1002 Evaluation Kit ships with the evaluation kit board, an MDIO interface board, a laptop PC pre-loaded with an easy-to-use Aeluros GUI software package, and all cables and connectors required to interface to the board. The board itself features an AEL1002 device with a 12" FR4 trace leading to an XFP connector and cage, into which any industry-standard XFP module can be inserted. This path validates the proper functionality of the device-to-module link across a channel equivalent to the worst-case XFI channel defined in the XFP MSA. SMA-based connections are provided to the XAUI interface of the Puma AEL1002 device, and an alternative SMA-based path to the XFI traces is available. The Puma AEL1002 can be configured to output a clean high-speed clock, at either the 10-Gbit/sec line rate or the divide-by-64 rate required for an XFP module. The Puma AEL1002 device can be clocked either via an on-board oscillator or an externally supplied clock, and the entire board requires only one +5 V power supply and an optional -5 V power supply.
The XFP evaluation kit schematic and layout files are also available, providing the basis for a robust reference design for XFP and Puma AEL1002-based applications.