Mindspeed Technologies, the Internet infrastructure business of Conexant Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CNXT), extended its OptiPHY family of synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) framers with new highest density and lowest pin-count OC-192 (10 Gbps) and OC-48 (2.5 Gbps) solutions.
The new devices are intended to move Mindspeed into the high-speed optical-networking framer market while expanding the company's offering across all SONET speeds from OC-3 (155 Mbps) to OC-192. Framers perform all of the tasks associated with organizing and identifying data packets so they can be moved over optical physical media utilizing standard SONET network infrastructure.
Mindspeed's OptiPHY-F10G and OptiPHY-F2.5G framers are targeted for gigabit and terabit Internet protocol (IP) routers, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches, voice/data gateways and other equipment deployed at the network's core and aggregation edge.
The new OC-192 and OC-48 framers will allow communications equipment designers to use industry standard, off-the-shelf components to terminate SONET/SDH physical interfaces, reducing the time-to-market and cost of new system designs.
In addition, the new components are designed as companion devices to Mindspeed's iScale switch fabric and network processors.
For 10 Gbps applications, Mindspeed's OptiPHY-F10G framer is the lowest pin count solution that includes a 10 Gbps System Packet Interface-4 (SPI-4) Phase 2 interface to physical layer devices and network processors. This new industry-standard interface reduces pin count over competing solutions by 50 percent and significantly cuts power consumption. In addition to a 10 Gbps OC-192/synchronous transport module level 64 (STM-64) interface, the device supports four 2.5 Gbps OC-48/STM-16 interfaces, allowing deployment of the same device in multi-speed applications.
The 10 Gbps OptiPHY-F10G device provides all SONET/SDH framing and payload termination for Packet-over-SONET (POS), a transport technology that eliminates the need for ATM transport layer solutions and associated equipment costs while enabling faster routing and more rapid point-to-point transport of IP traffic. POS support is also available with the 2.5 Gbps OptiPHY-F2.5GAdevice, which provides the added benefit of enabling simultaneous support for legacy ATM and IP-over-ATM services using a single software-configurable line card or system.
Mindspeed's newly expanded OptiPHY family is complemented by optical networking transceiver and crosspoint-switch solutions across the full spectrum of OC-3 to OC-192 data rates and a family of plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) to SONET/SDH broadband access multiplexer (BAM) mapper solutions. Each of these product families are also complemented by the new iScale switch fabric and a line of network processors, which enable customers to develop high-speed, high-density flexible programmable solutions for wide area network (WAN) applications.
Mindspeed's new OptiPHY framers are each highly integrated solutions that provide full-duplex overhead processing of SONET/SDH data streams in support of SONET OC-48/SDH STM-16, and, in the case of the OptiPHY-F10G framer, SONET OC-192/SDH STM-64 line interfaces.
In addition, the OptiPHY-F10G framer adds a line-side interface that is compliant with industry-standard SFI-4 interface transceivers. The system-side interface is compliant with the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) SPI-4 Phase 2 standard operating in the 16-bit low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) mode.
A generic 16-bit microprocessor interface is also provided for access to control and status registers. The OptiPHY-F10G framer can be configured as a single 10 Gbps framer or as a quad 2.5 Gbps framer.
The OptiPHY-F2.5G framer, like Mindspeed's earlier OC-3 OptiPHY-F155 framer, offers an ideal solution for carriers who wish to provision legacy ATM and IP-over-ATM services as well as newer POS services, using a single software-configurable line card or system. This reduces the size, cost and power requirements of equipment for aggregating IP and ATM broadband traffic onto metropolitan area networks, thus enabling carriers to deliver more total bandwidth per each line card or system.
Both of Mindspeed's new OptiPHY devices also support automatic protection switching (APS) by providing access to SONET overhead via external pins and internal registers. In addition, a full set of low-level software drivers are provided, accelerating software development and time-to-market for Mindspeed's customers. Each device is manufactured using low-power, 1.8V, complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.
In addition, the OptiPHY-F2.5G framer includes integrated clock-and-data recovery (CDR) functionality to enable direct connection to optical modules. The OptiPHY-F10G framer includes SPI-4 Phase 2 interfaces to the link layer, while the OptiPHY-F2.5G framer includes a universal test and operations interface for ATM (UTOPIA) and POS Level 3 interface to the ATM and POS layer devices.
The OptiPHY-F10G and the OptiPHY-F2.5G are packaged in 35mm High Performance Ball Grid Array (HPBGA) packages. The OptiPHY-F10G (M29730) is priced at $595 and the OptiPHY-F2.5G (M29720) is priced at $275 in OEM quantities of 10,000. Both will be available in sample quantities in July 2001, and volume production will commence in the fourth calendar quarter of 2001.
About Conexant Systems, Inc.:
Conexant Systems, Inc. provides semiconductor system solutions for communications applications. For more information, visit www.conexant.com or www.mindspeed.com.