APPLICATIONS

GigOptix LLC, a leading provider of electronic engines for the optically connected digital world, announces that it has started its production fabrication run for their 40G parallel VCSEL drivers and Transimpedance Limiting Amplifiers (TIAs). Production parts will be available for delivery in January 2009. The production run represents updated versions of the HXT4104 (4x10G) VCSEL driver and the HXR4104 (4x10G) TIA that were released earlier as engineering samples in March and June. Discussion with key customers led to improved performance and optimized power consumption in all designs. The power consumption for the HXR4104B was reduced to 56mW per channel while the HXT4104B power consumption was reduced to 63mW per channel representing an overall reduction of approximately 30% per channel. In addition, four power output settings were added to the TIA to allow the device to serve multiple reaches and PC board fanouts. Finally, the 10G TIAs will now have the ability to be used in both limiting and linear modes which allows them to be used in the widest number of applications. The parallel VCSEL drivers and TIAs will enable a new generation of low cost active cable products for Storage Area Networks (SAN), High Performance Computing (HPC), and Very Short Reach (VSR) communication and consumer applications and are designed to be compatible with the Quad Small form Factor Pluggable (QSFP). Applications include: • IEEE 802.3ba (pre-standard) Ethernet transceivers • InfiniBand QDR transceivers and active cables • ROSA applications for the new 40G (4x10G) 802.3ba 40GBASE-LR specification • Backwards compatibility with DDR applications at 5 and 6 Gb/s Jörg Wieland, vice president and general manager of GigOptix-Helix, AG states, “With these designs we enable our customers to migrate seamlessly to the next performance level. Module and active cable manufacturers rely on the completeness of functionality and resilience of operation that we provide; our high product quality reflects more than 10 years of service to this market.” The HXT/R4104 chipsets simplify system design by being fully programmable via an industry standard 2-wire interface. This enables control of signal peaking, laser disable, output power in addition to providing access to temperature and power monitoring on a channel by channel basis. GigOptix-Helix AG is also announcing that the Rev 2.0 I2C GUI (graphical user interface) is now available for use with the chips. The GUI software gives the user the ability to test the chip and all of the I2C functionality with a PC based interface. Eye safety, AGC, peaking and other features can be controlled and tested via a mouse click. The HXT4104 and the HXR4104 are currently sampling and will be available as full production parts in January 2009.