New Products from Intel's "Other" group !!
Intel ups its optical comms ante with transponder trio
By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times
Feb 13, 2002 (1:35 PM)
URL: eetimes.com
SAN MATEO, Calif. — Intel Corp. has released the latest products in its push to become a player in optical communications.
The three 10-Gbit/second transponders are the most recent fruits of Intel's acquisition of LightLogic Inc. (Newark, Calif.) early last year. The TXN13200 and TXN13201 are for Sonet and 10-Gbit/s Ethernet, respectively. Both conform to the small-form-factor version of the 300-pin multisource agreement (MSA) for transponders.
The devices are smaller than LightLogic's TXN13300, which Intel released for the OC-192 (10-Gbit/s) Sonet market late last year, said Dan Sweeney, general manager of Intel's Optical Platform Division. "Instead of one or two I/Os per line card, this allows four or five," he said.
Consisting of transmit and receive optics plus high-speed electronics, 10-Gbit/s transponders cover a market that ranges from customer-premises equipment up to the client side of dense wave-division multiplexing (DWDM) systems.
The long-haul side of a DWDM box — the side pointing to the wide-area network — remains proprietary for many OEMs; it also requires more expensive elements. As a result, most OEMs continue to use discrete components rather than transponders for long-haul purposes, Sweeney said.
The two transponders will sell for less than $2,000 in volume, Intel officials said.
Meanwhile, Intel is sampling the TXN-17401, which conforms to the Xenpak MSA spec that several companies are adopting for 10-Gbit/s Ethernet transponders. Several companies already have announced Xenpak parts as the IEEE 802.3ae standard for 10-Gbit Ethernet approaches ratification this year. Blaze Network Products Inc. (Dublin, Calif.) began sampling the Flame-thrower-XGLX4 Xenpak transceiver in December. Similarly, Agere Systems Inc. (Allentown, Pa.), announced it will begin shipping its AE20LRCAA single-chip transponder in January.
Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) expects to price the TXN17401 at less than $1,000 in volume.
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