Broadcom Corporation, a provider of semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, has introduced a new generation of full-featured, energy efficient multi-port Gigabit physical layer transceiver (PHY) devices.
The rise in the use of network and Internet applications has caused a bandwidth crunch, which has led carriers and Internet service providers (ISPs) to deploy networks that not only support existing bandwidth requirements but also provide the flexibility to scale according to future demands, such as 4G.
In addition, the need for greater processing power has also led to increases in power consumption across the network.
Currently, Gigabit Ethernet is under consideration to solve the booming bandwidth and higher processing power demands of enterprise networks, as it allows large amounts of data to be processed very quickly. Consequently, the demand for physical layer transceiver (PHY) devices, which are used in Gigabit Ethernet network applications, has also increased.
Cashing in on the trend, Broadcom announced the expansion of its enterprise and carrier class PHY portfolio with the addition of the 40 nanometer (nm) BCM54290 family of PHYs, which are optimized for use in power-intensive Ethernet network applications.
As part of the company’s new generation of energy efficient devices, the 40 nm BCM54290 family of PHYs delivers the industry's lowest power consumption and also provides a 40 percent power reduction compared to previous generation 65nm GPHYs, Broadcom (News - Alert) Corp. said in a statement.
This power saving benefit throughout the network was possible due to Broadcom's Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) portfolio as well the AutoGrEEEn Plus technology.
The AutoGrEEEn Plus technology can provide up to 70 percent lower power consumption and can also extend energy savings to legacy MACs and non-EEE devices. This technology can be deployed when the device is in EEE mode communicating with an EEE link partner or when linked to a non-EEE enabled device.
Offering comprehensive time synchronization and high accuracy, the new 40 nm BCM54290 family of PHYs features 1ns 1588 PTP time-stamp resolution, while providing support for IEEE (News - Alert) 802.3bf.
Apart from being completely compliant to EEE for 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX, the new 40 nm BCM54290 family of PHYs also has more feature sets for Synchronous Ethernet, 1588 precision-time synchronization and Y.1731 latency performance monitoring. These devices are also provided with enhanced cable plant diagnostics that detect cable plant impairments.
The new PHY family consists of six device options, namely BCM54290 octal-port SGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY, BCM54292 octal-port QSGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY; BCM54295 Octal-port QSGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY with copper/fiber dual media interface; BCM54294 quad-port SGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY with copper/fiber dual media interface; BCM54291 quad-port QSGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY; and BCM54296 quad-port QSGMII 10/100/1000BASE-T PHY with copper/fiber dual media interface.
Ali Abaye, senior director of product marketing of PHY at Broadcom, said in a statement, "Highly precise synchronization, accurate latency management and power consumption are critical considerations for carrier Ethernet networks as they prepare for 4G deployment.”
Abaye added, “The BCM54290 PHY family is tailor-made for use in stringent time synchronization applications and designed to address the challenges faced by LTE (News - Alert) and LTE-Advanced networks.”
Edited by Rory J. Thompson