Ensphere 10G optical transceiver powers optical Thunderbolt cables

Ensphere Solutions Inc., a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, says the first Thunderbolt active optical cables (AOC) to enter the market are based on its ESI-XVR10100 optical transceiver.

Thunderbolt is a high-speed PC connection technology developed by Intel Corp., initially under the name LightPeak. It provides bi-directional 10-Gbps data transmission, and is PCI Express and DisplayPort compatible. Sumitomo started shipping Thunderbolt cables back in April (see "Sumitomo Electric samples optical Thunderbolt cable").

"Our first optical Thunderbolt cables chose an optical engine design based on the Ensphere ESI-XVR10100 due to its excellent match with our overall design requirements," said Shigeo Saito, executive officer, deputy general manager, electronics business unit and general manager of electronic wire division, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.

Ensphere says the ESI-XVR10100 optical transceiver device is ideally suited for optical Thunderbolt cable designs. The device offers two 10-Gbps lanes, on-chip thermal sensors and VCSEL compensation logic to ensure the best overall performance. OEM customers can pre-program special operating characteristics into its OTP memory, and can add up to four slave devices for applications requiring wider parallel interfaces.

"Optical cable suppliers know the importance of choosing high performance 10-Gbps optical engines with a careful balance of silicon CMOS performance, low power operation, and low-profile products in order to meet the overall optical Thunderbolt design requirements," said Hessam Mohajeri, founder and CEO of Ensphere. "That the first such cables to enter the market have chosen the Ensphere ESI-XVR10100 is an acknowledgement of our design and delivery capabilities."

The ESI-XVR10100 is currently available in die form in production quantities.

For more information on active optical cables and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyers Guide.