AppliedMicro Introduces 10GBASE-T IC

AppliedMicro introduced its Triveni family of dual and quad port, low power 100/1000/10GBASE-T physical layer ICs (PHYs) for next gen data center equipment. The 10GBASE-T technology provides up to 100m of data center cabling and offers a lower cost alternative to top-of-rack and short-reach optical solutions.


The company said it is entering this market with technology that overcomes issues that have impeded the rollout of 10GBASE-T to date, namely, power consumption and noise interference from walkie-talkies, cell phones and other wireless devices. AppliedMicro said the attenuation of a 10Gbps signal over media such as a Cat6A cable, even a small amount of RF interference can overwhelm the input signal at the receiver, making it potentially impossible for the DSP to correctly identify and reconstruct the signal. This results in dropped links for the duration of the interference. In the absence of EMI cancellation techniques, 10GBASE-T PHYs go to "fast retrain" to re-establish a dropped link within 30 milliseconds. This results in the loss of Ethernet packets, making it unsuitable for a large number of applications.


AppliedMicro's Triveni family is addressing this problem by employing patent pending EMI cancellation techniques that would prevent a 10GBASE-T link from dropping in the presence of RF interference created by overhead air traffic communications, television signals and walkie talkies.


The Triveni family offers a power dissipation of approximately 3.5W at full 10Gbps rate while operating in 100m mode on a CAT6A cable. Dynamic power scaling further reduces the power for shorter cable reaches and intra-rack applications.


A footprint of 21x21 mm for the dual and 27x27 mm for the quad make Triveni solutions suitable for network interface card/host bus adapter (NIC/HBA), LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) or high-density switch card applications.


AppliedMicro offers various energy-efficient modes in the Triveni family, including WOL, EEE and link power detect modes to help alleviate data center power usage. Depending on link utilization and system requirements the Triveni PHY can save significant amounts of power. Smart MAC offload features can power down other components on the card to further reduce system power.


Samples of the Triveni family will be available in Q3 2010.
http://www.appliedmicro.com/