MANHASSET, NY -- Xilinx Inc has begun initial shipments ofthe Virtex-7 H580T FPGA, a single-chip solution for addressing key Nx100G and400G line card applications and functions.
The part uses its stacked silicon interconnect technology inthe 3-D heterogeneous FPGA, which is built on TSMC's 28-nm process. TheVirtex-7 H580T FPGA features up to sixteen 28 Gbps and 72 13.1 Gbpstransceivers.
Xilinx claims other FPGAs are able to integrate only afourth of the number of 28 Gbps channels.
The heterogeneous implementation of Virtex-7 HT devices alsoenables Xilinx to make independent technology choices for the core FPGA and 28Gbps transceiver die, which avoids burdening the FPGA with high leakagetransistors that waste system power and bring no benefit to computation tasks.Having 28 Gbps transceivers on silicon separate from the core FPGA fabricfurther allows for superior noise isolation, enabling best overall signalintegrity and system margin, as well as improved productivity for designclosure and faster time to market, according to Xilinx.
"Xilinx has clearly hit an industry milestone with thisdevice because it allows makers of networking systems to easily overcome thechallenges they face to enable more bandwidth," said Chris Bergey, vicepresident of marketing at silicon photonics leader Luxtera Inc, a maker of 4x28Gbps single chip silicon photonic transceivers, in a statement.
Effectively upgrading networks to handle exponential growthin data usage requires power and port density improvements in optical moduleswhile reducing cost per bit. Driven by the migration to CFP2 and, in thefuture, CFP4 optical modules, Virtex-7 HT devices enable that capability forcommunication equipment vendors designing Nx100G and 400G line cards.
"Competing ASSP-based solutions will comprise five devices,will remain unavailable for more than a year, will consume at least 40% additionalpower and will cost 50% more," claimed Mark Gustlin, system architect for wiredcommunications at Xilinx.
The upcoming Virtex-7 H870T device is also 400GE ready andwill be able to support future 400GE modules that require16x25 Gbps interfaces.
This story was originally posted by EETimes.
