Inphi achieves 80 Gbit/s data rate with indium phosphide demultiplexers
Inphi s 80 Gbit/s achievement in indium phosphide exceeds recently published results in silicon germanium, which reached half-rate speeds of only 56 Gbit/s. Moreover, although Inphi s half-rate demultiplexer operates at a much higher speed than the SiGe circuits, it dissipates the same amount of power. At a reduced data rate of 40 Gbit/s, for example, Inphi s half-rate demultiplexer dissipates only 400 milliwatts of power, which is approximately one third the power as SiGe half-rate circuits operating at the same speed.
The Inphi 80 Gbit/s circuits are based on a half-rate architecture, which is equivalent in terms of clock rate to a full-rate circuit running at 40 Gbit/s. These half-rate circuits dissipate 1.3 watts of power at 80 Gbit/s operation and 400 milliwatts of power at 40 Gbit/s operation - levels comparable to existing OC-192 components.
"This latest achievement clearly solidifies Inphi s position as a technology leader in the optical components space," said Gopal Raghavan, co-founder and CTO of Inphi Corporation. "We have now demonstrated the fastest half-rate and full-rate indium phosphide parts for applications at speeds of 40 Gbit/s and higher."
In a half-rate design, the clock driver samples the incoming signal on both the rising edge and the falling edge of the clock. By contrast, in a full-rate design, the signal is sampled on only one clock edge, either rising or falling but not both. Most commercial ICs are based on full-rate architectures; half-rate architectures are more sensitive to actual transport system variations such as duty cycle distortion and thus are generally used only in short-reach and lower-performance systems.
In October 2001, Inphi announced full-rate packaged multiplexer and demultiplexer prototypes at speeds greater than 50 Gbit/s with a power consumption of less than 900 milliwatts. These products are currently sampling to customers. They are based on Inphi s InP/CMOS chipset architecture, which combines the speed and low power of InP components with highly integrated, cost-competitive standards compliant CMOS components. Whether at a half-rate or full-rate clock, the Inphi architecture to date has yielded superior results in terms of both speed and power dissipation compared with SiGe technology.
Based in Westlake Village, California, Inphi Corporation was formed in November 2000 and is a privately held fabless company in the optical communications industry. Inphi delivers the highest bandwidth, lowest-power InP ICs to optical communications suppliers who need breakthrough solutions at 40 Gbit/s, 50 Gbit/s, and beyond.
Eric Lawson,
Manning, Selvage & Lee Global Technology
Tel: +1 323 866 6087
E-mail: eric.lawson@msltech.com
Web site: http://www.inphi-corp.com
