CLOUD

OTTAWA, CANADA -- Quake Technologies, Inc., a fabless developer of mixed signal, physical layer ICs for 10 and 40 Gb/s optical networks, has successfully demonstrated 10 Gb/s Ethernet interoperability between Quake's QT2020 10 Gb/s Ethernet transceiver and PMC-Sierra's (Nasdaq: PMCS) PM8355 QuadPHY-II Serializer/Deserializer 4-channel 3.125 Gb/s transceiver. Together, these two devices form an integral part of the IEEE 802.3ae physical layer for 10 Gb/s Ethernet LAN and MAN applications, communicating via the XAUI interface. Interoperability at the XAUI interface is key for each chip as this interface is the essential communication bridge between a module, such as a XENPAK module, and the system card hosting that module. "The QT2020 already leads with unprecedented performance and superb jitter tolerance, and now we've demonstrated it can be successfully deployed in a 10 Gb/s Ethernet system configuration with a leading IC vendor's device," said Dan Trepanier, president and CEO of Quake. "The testing also validates a consistent implementation of the IEEE 802.3ae standard among different vendors, and shows that 10 Gb/s Ethernet is a credible technology to deploy." "PMC-Sierra's collaboration with Quake Technologies further illustrates that with established interoperability testing standards, network equipment vendors will be able to focus on designing systems rather than verifying connectivity," said Peter Wong, strategic marketing manager of PMC-Sierra's Enterprise and Storage Division. Quake's QT2020 and PMC-Sierra's QuadPHY-II Interoperability Testing Quake's QT2020, which has been sampling with evaluation customers since November 2001, is a fully integrated, monolithic XAUI to 10 Gb/s serial fiber transceiver. PMC-Sierra's QuadPHY-II device is a XGMII to XAUI transceiver that offers the industry's widest range of 10 Gigabit serial backplane operation, while supporting IEEE 802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet Standard, Fibre Channel and Infiniband (2.5 Gb/s) optical applications. The interoperability testing consisted of interconnecting the two evaluation systems at the XAUI interface, simulating a real-world network implementation of 10 Gb/s Ethernet. The XAUI test traffic was generated on PMC-Sierra's PM2373-KIT QuadPHY-II XENPAK/10GE evaluation system, passed via the XAUI interface to Quake's QT2020, and then looped externally on the fiber side. Error free data was returned by the QT2020 to the QuadPHY-II, demonstrating XAUI interoperability between the two devices. For additional information visit www.pmc-sierra.com/10GE or www.quaketech.com.