Chip Makers Eye Fiber Optic Market
pubs.cmpnet.com
(9:45 a.m. EDT, 5/22/98)
By Mark LaPedus
In what could be a sneak preview of next
month's Supercomm '98 trade show in Atlanta,
several chip makers this week begun rushing out
products designed for the emerging fiber-optic
market.
Applied Micro Circuits Corp., Lucent
Technologies Inc., TranSwitch Corp., Vitesse
Semiconductor Corp., and a slew of other
companies have or will show SONET/SDH
chips at Supercomm '98, which is slated for
June 7-11.
Eariler this week, for example, the
Microelectronics Group of Lucent Technologies
got the ball rolling by announcing the
TMPR28051, a chipset that complies with both
the North American (SONET) and European
(SDH) fiber-optic transmission standards.
Consisting of two chips known as a mapper and
multiplexer, Lucent's chipset converts 28
channels of DSI signals, or 21 channels of E1
signals, into a 51.84- to 155.2-Mbit/s format,
according to Dave Romero, marketing manager
for Lucent's Microelectronics Group.
The mapper and multiplexer are both available in
208-pin SQFP packages.
Pricing for the mapper chip is $165 in
10,000-piece lots, while the multiplexer IC is
$140, in similar quantities.
Another chip maker, Camarillo, Calif.-based
Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., rolled out two
gallium arsenide-based, physical-interface
chipsets for 2.5-Gbit/s SONET/SDH systems.
The products, called the VSC8161 and
VSC8162, are designed to reduce overall
systems cost for OC-48/STM-16 networks.
The mainstream SONET market falls at OC-48
transmission rates, but the OC-192 arena will
emerge in the future, according to Andrew
Schmitt, telecom marketing engineer for Vitesse.
The VSC8161 is available in a 100-pin PQFP
package. The VSC8162 is available in a
128-pin PQFP package. Pricing is $198 for the
VSC8161, and $158 for the VSC8162, both in
1,000-unit quantities. Production is slated this
September.
TranSwitch plans to expand its SONET/SDH
line later this month, according to Santanu Das,
president and chief executive of the Shelton,
Conn.-based company.
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