Oct 21 2009
New Tethys II Devices Offer Flexible Feature Set for Next-Generation Line Cards
Exar Corporation (Nasdaq: EXAR) today expanded its Tethys(TM) product with the introduction of Tethys II devices, the industry's highest density SONET/SDH Framers comprised of the PEB2756 and PEB2757 which deliver 40G of bandwidth in a single device. The new Tethys II devices provide a flexible feature set that can be coupled with Optical Transport Network (OTN) devices to enable next-generation line cards for optical networking. The new devices offer OEMs a solution for developing cost-effective products that increase line card port count and capacity while decreasing per-port cost and power.
The Tethys II devices are single-chip solutions that integrate functions previously requiring several components, including aggregation of up to 16 channels of traffic, serializing/deserializing, pointer processing, clock and data recovery, as well as transport overhead (TOH) and path overhead (POH) processing. The PEB2756 supports four OC-192/STM-64 channels. The PEB2757 supports four OC-192/STM-64, sixteen OC-48/STM-1, sixteen OC-12/STM-4, or sixteen OC-3/STM-1 channels, which can be mixed in any combination. Both devices support aggregate throughput up to 40 Gbps while meeting the most stringent SONET/SDH jitter requirements.
"The Tethys II devices provide our customers with a key component for emerging high density 10 Gbps line card solutions," said John Williams, division vice president, Datacom and Storage, Exar. "Combining Tethys II with Exar's MXP2 OTN framer also provides an ideal solution for next-generation hybrid packet/TDM network equipment."
About the Tethys II Family
The Tethys II family provides unsurpassed flexibility allowing ports to be independently configured for different data rates, permitting "any port, any rate" implementations and by providing a direct interface to optical modules. This allows equipment to be programmed in the field by simply changing the optical modules, enabling service providers to purchase one card for use in multiple applications, substantially reducing maintenance costs, in-service upgrades and inventory.
The on-chip SERDES, clock and data recovery (CDR) and clock multiplier unit support 2.5 Gbps, 622 Mbps and 155 Mbps multi-rate I/O which connect directly to multi-rate SFP optics. The line-side interfaces for the Tethys II devices include programmable serial SERDES ports as well as the SFI-4.1 and SFI-4.2 interfaces required for the OC-192/STM-64 mode and connection to 10Gbps OTN / FEC devices. The system-side interface for both devices supports TFI-5.
Availability
The new Tethys II devices are offered in a 1400-pin BGA package. Samples of both the PEB2757 and PEB2756 will be available in the 4th quarter of this year, with volume production planned for first quarter of 2010.