Low power 100GbE multi-rate gearbox PHYs from Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation has announced the low power and high performance multi-rate 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) physical layer transceivers (PHYs) for next-generation data center, enterprise and core networks. The new Broadcom BCM84790 and BCM84793 gearbox PHYs offers the first multi-rate interface for 4-lane (4x25 Gbps) and 10-lane (10x10 Gbps) bi-directional transmissions.

The 40 nm CMOS architecture dissipates 2.5 watts per port. The BCM84790 features a 17x17 mm BGA package to support CFP network applications. The BCM84793 features a 19x19 mm BGA package with the ability to support 10-lane bi-directional transmissions at 10 Gbps each. This added flexibility ensures support for future-generation networking formats such as CFP2 and CXP.

The BCM84790 and BCM84793 gearbox PHYs have the ability to multiplex and demultiplex data across four 25 Gbps channels to (or from) ten 10Gbps channels. Hence they can be used in high bandwidth data center and enterprise networks. Both devices can also be configured to support four bi-directional lanes at 10Gbps for 40GbE repeater applications, support Ethernet and optical transport networking, and are compliant with the IEEE 802.3ba standard for 100GbE and ITU OTL 4.4 signaling.

Features:
1. Supports Ethernet and optical transport networking (OTN)
2. 100GbE/OTN VSR28 to CAUI interface
3. Less than 200 femtoseconds (fs) root mean square (rms) of random jitter on the 25Gbps transmit outputs
4. High speed eye monitoring diagnostics on all data I/O
5. Integrated clean-up phase lock loop (PLL)
6. Single REFCLK (reference clock) input
7. Low latency architecture

Lorenzo Longo, Broadcom VP & GM, High-speed Interconnect Products quotes: "Broadcom is committed to providing the broadest portfolio of 10GbE, 40GbE and now 100GbE PHYs in the industry. Our new 100GbE gearbox PHYs achieve the industry's highest performance and lowest power consumption, a combination which is very difficult to achieve. These industry-leading PHYs also offer the unique advantage of enabling new 100G applications with backward-compatibility to existing 10GbE and 40GbE rates."

The BCM84790 and BCM84793 are sampling now. Production release is scheduled for the second half of 2012.

May 7, 2012

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