Avalon Develops 100GE Over OTN Transponder Application
Dec 11, 2009 – Avalon has developed their first working 100GE over OTN transponder application, using their industry-leading Zenobia Virtual Application-Specific Standard Product (V-ASSP) in conjunction with the “Cobra” 100G demonstration platform.
Recently showcased at SUPERCOMM 2009 in Chicago, this application maps a 100GE client signal via GMP and transports it over OTU4. The Cobra platform, which takes advantage of Altera’s Stratix IV GT FPGAs, interfaces with an EXFO 100GE tester through CFP modules on the client side. With an optical loopback on the line side 100G CFP modules, the platform demonstrates datapath continuity of a 100GE client signal, GMP-mapped over OTU4.
Wally Haas, Avalon’s CTO stated, “I am very excited to announce the availability of what we believe to be one of the earliest working examples of 100GE over OTN in an FPGA solution, with Altera’s Stratix IV GT FPGA, Avalon can demonstrate our technical capability and with our investment in a 100G tester, our customers can be assured of the quality of Avalon’s 100G product.”
Behind the success of this 100GE demo is Avalon’s latest IP product, Zenobia: a fully-featured 100G V-ASSP capable of operating as a 100G Transponder, Regenerator, Muxponder or ADM. With up to 112G throughput and support for a variety of OTN, SONET/SDH and Ethernet client rates from GE over ODU0 up to OTU4, Zenobia combines an OTU4 Framer with ODU4/OPU4 overhead processing and allows customers to choose between the G.709 FEC and a variety of Enhanced FEC (EFEC) algorithms.
Zenobia is a flexible FPGA solution that is years ahead of the ASSP market with respect to this innovative technology. The flexibility provided by FPGA solutions allows Avalon to develop complete IP solutions throughout the standardization process. Since FPGAs are re-programmable, the product is able to evolve with the 100G standard, rather than forcing the market to wait until the standards have been finalized.
Avalon’s Cobra demonstration platform allows customers to extensively evaluate Avalon’s 100G technology and can be used as a reference design for their own 100G systems. Providing unprecedented system bandwidth, Altera’s Stratix IV GT FPGA enables this demonstration of 100G transport by leveraging the device’s integrated multi-gigabit transceivers, 32 of which operate up to 11.3 Gbps
“Altera’s Stratix IV GT FPGAs are optimized to support 100G OTU applications,” said Arun Iyengar, senior director of Altera’s Communications Business Unit. “The integrated 11.3Gbps transceivers can interface directly to optical modules or chip-to-chip interfaces such as SFI-S or MLD. Avalon’s Zenobia V-ASSP successfully demonstrates a 100G transponder today, while also supporting future changes to the standard.”
