Agilent Technologies Introduces Industry-first Serial 10 Gb/s Ethernet Transceiver in XENPAK Package
Source: Agilent Technologies
1310 nm XAUI Transceiver Considered Critical to the Emerging 10 GbE Market
Palo Alto, CA. Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that it will introduce the industry s first Serial 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) transceiver module at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC), booth no. 402, next week at the Rai Centre in Amsterdam. The Agilent 10 GBASE-LR XENPAK Transceiver offers the XAUI interface, and has been designed to the proposed 802.3ae IEEE 10 GbE standard and the XENPAK multi-source agreement (MSA) that Agilent co-founded earlier this year. It is expected to be a key enabler of the emerging 10 GbE market.
Agilent s small reliable low-cost 10 GbE transceiver is ideal for emerging 10 GbE applications including campus trunking, data aggregation, enterprise to metropolitan uplinks, equipment room and exchange point-to-point links. The new 1310 nm, serial transceiver has a range of 10 kilometers (km). Agilent s own uncooled, directly modulated laser technology delivers unmatched 10 Gb performance without the need for traditional modulators, coolers or complex optical multiplexing. The new laser and the critical optical receiver employed in the module were both developed and manufactured by Agilent, giving users an assurance of quality and supply.
"The 1310 serial 10 km technology is the watershed optical technology for 10 Gigabit Ethernet," said Euan Livingston, strategic marketing manager for Agilent s Networking Solutions Division. "By packaging Agilent s optical technology into a compact, front panel pluggable XENPAK transceiver, we have developed a product that will hit the high volume $1,000 price point that is critical for enabling the 10 Gigabit market."
The new optical module is an "intelligent" LAN PHY that incorporates the complete physical layer functionality from the optical interface to the XAUI (4 channels at 3.125 Gb/s) electrical interface, including both 8/10B and 64/66B coding and decoding. Agilent is developing reference designs with leading XAUI chip manufacturers so that network equipment manufacturers can quickly implement a 10 GbE port with the assurance that it will work at maximum performance the first time.
Agilent s 10 GbE serial module offers world-class EMI and thermal performance, enabling high port density configurations of up to eight ports per line card. The modules are front panel "hot pluggable" allowing for "plug and play" of all four physical media device (PMD) transceiver types. End users will benefit from this flexibility because they can buy a switch and populate it with links at a later date. This feature also eliminates system downtime during upgrades and repairs.
Agilent is the clear leader in the 1 Gigabit optical Ethernet market, having shipped over 2 million Ethernet transceivers in 2000. The company has also been a major contributor to the 10 Gigabit IEEE 802.3ae standard. For example, the 64/66B encoding scheme, which greatly reduces overhead for transmitting IP data streams, was developed at Agilent Labs.
U.S. Pricing and Availability Agilent expects to sample its 10 GBASE-LR XENPAK Transceiver in October to select customers, with broad sampling planned for the first quarter of 2002 and production volumes planned for the third quarter of 2002. The transceiver pricing is expected to be below $1,000 when the 10 Gb market reaches high volume, which is expected to be in 2003. More information is available at www.agilent.com/view/networking.
About Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics and life sciences. The company s 43,000 employees serve customers in more than 120 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $9.4 billion in fiscal year 2000, as restated to reflect the sale of its healthcare business. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at .
Contact: Sonja Hiller at Agilent Tel: +49 7031 464 7909 sonja_hiller@agilent.com or Craig Brophy Hotwire PR, for Agilent Tel: +44 20 7608 2500 craig.brophy@hotwirepr.com
Sonja Hiller at AgilentTel: +49 7031 464 7909
sonja_hiller@agilent.com
or
Craig Brophy
Hotwire PR, for Agilent
Tel: +44 20 7608 2500
craig.brophy@hotwirepr.com
E-mail: craig.brophy@hotwirepr.com
Web site: http://www.agilent.com/view/networking
