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Altera Starts Production Shipments of the Industry's First FPGAs with Integrated 11.3-Gbps Transceivers

23rd October 2009

Altera Europe

ES Admin

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Altera today announced it has started shipping in production its Stratix® IV GT EP4S100G2 FPGA, the industry's first FPGA featuring integrated 11.3-Gbps transceivers. Stratix IV GT FPGAs are the only single-chip devices available today that meet the high-speed bandwidth requirements for next-generation framer, MAC, bridging and switching applications for 100-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 100-Gigabit Optical Transport Networks (OTN). Altera's proven high-density, high-performance 100G solutions enable communications systems designers developing 100G systems to accelerate their time to market and reduce risk compared to ASICs, ASSPs and other currently available FPGA technologies.

Altera's 100G solutions include production silicon, 100G intellectual property (IP), 100G reference designs and development boards supporting 100G applications. To date, a wide range of customers have adopted Stratix IV GT FPGAs for use in 100G systems and platforms, including 100G test equipment, 100G Ethernet transport, 10 x 10 GbE aggregation and OTN applications. Additionally, five of the top seven DWDM suppliers selected Stratix IV GT FPGAs for their 100G development.

Stratix IV GT FPGAs are designed to meet the emerging IEEE 802.3 standard for 100G systems used in advanced wireline and military communications systems and high-end test equipment. Stratix IV GT FPGAs are available today to meet customer production demands and performance requirements as these 100G standards become finalized. The 36 transceiver channels featured in the EP4S100G2 operate from 2.488 Gbps to 11.3 Gbps, and provide the FPGA industry's lowest jitter performance to meet 10G, 40G and 100G protocol specifications. The 11.3-Gbps integrated transceivers eliminate the need for an external PHY, allowing for a direct interface between the Stratix IV GT FPGA and 10G, 40G or 100G optical modules.

The Stratix IV GT EP4S100G2 FPGA is a single device that lowers system power, reduces board complexity and lowers overall development costs while offering the following capabilities:

* Fastest transceivers—36 total transceivers, 24 of which operate at 11.3 Gbps

* Lowest system power—low 0.95-V core power

* Best-in-class signal integrity—features noise filtering with on-die and on-package decoupling

* Fastest memory interface—1,067-Mbps (533-MHz) DDR3 memory

* Rich in resources—230K logic elements (LEs), 13.9-Mbits internal RAM, and 1,288 18 x 18 multipliers

The increasing number of broadband subscribers worldwide is driving telecommunications equipment manufacturers to rapidly build out their 100G network infrastructure, and FPGAs are playing a vital role in enabling this build out, said Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of component product marketing at Altera. As the first and only FPGA vendor shipping devices today with integrated 11.3 Gbps transceivers capable of meeting 100G system demands, Altera is leading the charge in enabling the deployment of 100G systems.