ACADEMIA

Faster Technology announced support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet across their entire line of high speed networking FMC modules. These FMC (FPGA Mezzanine Card) modules are based on the VITA 57 standard and enable various forms of input/output protocols when connecting to a FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) on a carrier card. With four or eight channels on a card, the upgraded reference design now facilitates up to 160 Gigabits per second of bidirectional data flow on a single FMC module.

The upgrade was performed using two of the latest Xilinx 7-Series development boards, the KC-705 and VC-707. On the KC-705, four channels of bidirectional serial data were run at 10.3125 Gigabits per second to achieve an aggregate bandwidth of over 80 Gigabits per second. On the VC-707, sixteen channels of bidirectional serial data were run at 10.3125 Gigabits per second using two FMCs to achieve an aggregate bandwidth of over 320 Gigabits per second on a single development board, clearly demonstrating the high bandwidth density possible with FMCs.

By taking advantage of the ability to connect directly to the FPGA and Xilinx’s embedded multi-gigabit transceivers, Faster Technology attains 10 Gigabit rates with minimal latency by eliminating the external physical layer device traditionally used in 10 Gigabit systems. The 10 Gigabit capability and the low latency of these FMC modules is critical in latency sensitive applications such as financial analysis and trading systems and high performance computing.

"Support for 10 Gigabit demonstrates our commitment to providing the highest performance and lowest latency networking solutions to our customers" said John McCaskill, President of Faster Technology.