Sorting through the 100G IP options

Needless to say, each FPGA supplier believes it offers a better product. Altera called Avalon the OTN and Ethernet leader among independent IP houses (including Omiino) when it acquired the company. Xilix’s Garcia, meanwhile, suggested to Lightwave that Omiino’s exclusive focus on IP for FPGAs versus the dual-use nature of Avalon’s IP made Omiino a more seamless fit in FPGA applications – an assertion a Newfoundland Technology Centre executive waved off when asked about it a OFC/NFOEC in March 2011.

But if you’re looking at using FPGAs in your high-speed OTN or Ethernet design, what other IP core options are there besides rolling your own? One perhaps unlikely source would be an ASSP vendor. AppliedMicro (Nasdaq:AMCC) actually started the run on OTN/Ethernet IP companies when it bought TPACK A/S of Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2010 (see "AppliedMicro to acquire FPGA IP company TPACK to pursue OTN biz"). Like Avalon Microelectronics, TPACK offered both IP and Altera FPGA-based standard products, including (but not limited to) OTN devices. These “SoftSilicon” products included the P-OCKET series of OTN mappers, including add/drop muxes, as well as OTN switches.

But AppliedMicro doesn’t appear to be in the IP core market, preferring to leverage the TPACK technology for its own versions of the SoftSilicon products, including the TPOT414 and TPOT424 OTU4 transponders for OTU4 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet clients. If you’re just looking for IP, there are some outlets. One is Sembarc, whose Goliath transponder cores include the C series. The series comprises the Goliath_CE_CO 100GbE to OTU-4 core and the Goliath_CO_CO OTU-4 to OTU-4 regen core, as well as Sembarc’s muxponder cores, the Goliath_10XE_CO 10x10GbE to OTU-4 and the Goliath_80IE_CO 80x1GbE to OTU-4 cores.

Meanwhile, Aliathon Ltd. of Scotland offers cores for such 100-Gbps applications as transponders, 10x10G multi-protocol muxponders, add/drop multiplexers, repeaters, and ODUmuxes.

Finally, Xelic Inc. has 40-Gbps cores in its portfolio and undoubtedly has high-speed technology in development.

Which is not a lot of choice, but what’s left after silicon vendors have opened their wallets in hopes that their 100-Gbps customers will do the same.

September 16, 2011

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