GigOptix Announces Production Run of 40G Silicon

GigOptix has started its production fabrication run of 40G parallel VCSEL drivers and Transimpedance Limiting Amplifiers (TIAs). The parallel VCSEL drivers and TIAs will enable a new generation of low cost active cable products for Storage Area Networks (SAN), High Performance Computing (HPC), and Very Short Reach (VSR) communication and consumer applications and are designed to be compatible with the Quad Small form Factor Pluggable (QSFP). Production parts will be available for delivery in January 2009.


Since engineering samples were released earlier this year, discussion with key customers led to improved performance and optimized power consumption in all designs. The power consumption for the HXR4104B was reduced to 56mW per channel while the HXT4104B power consumption was reduced to 63mW per channel representing an overall reduction of approximately 30% per channel. In addition, four power output settings were added to the TIA to allow the device to serve multiple reaches and PC board fanouts. Finally, the 10G TIAs will now have the ability to be used in both limiting and linear modes which allows them to be used in the widest number of applications. Potential applications include: IEEE 802.3ba (pre-standard) Ethernet transceivers, InfiniBand QDR transceivers and active cables, ROSA applications for the new 40G (4x10G) 802.3ba 40GBASE-LR specification, and backwards compatibility with DDR applications at 5 and 6 Gbps.
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