Altera demonstrerer 32 Gbit/s transceiver i 20nm procesteknologi

Altera har ved brug af TSMC’s såkaldte 20SoC procesteknologi (20nm) fremstillet de første FPGA'er med integrerede 32 Gbit/s transceivere (in english). 

This achievement validates the performance capabilities of 20 nm silicon and is a positive indicator to the more than 500 customers in Altera’s early access program who are looking to use next-generation Altera devices in the development of performance demanding, bandwidth-centric applications. Demonstrating 32-Gbps transceiver data rates provides Altera insight into how high-performance transceiver designs behave on TSMC's 20SoC process.

The transceiver technology Altera is demonstrating will be integrated into its 20 nm FPGA products, fabricated on TSMC’s 20SoC process. These devices enable customers to design next-generation serial links with the lowest power consumption, fastest timing closure and the highest quality signal integrity.

Altera has a proven track record in integrating leading-edge transceiver technology into its devices. Altera is according to the company the only one shipping production 28 nm FPGAs with monolithically integrated low-power transceivers operating at 28 Gbps. Being the first FPGA vendor to reach the 32-Gbps milestone in 20 nm silicon further extends Altera's leadership in transceiver technology, the company stresses.

A demonstration video on Altera’s web site (www.altera.com/32gbps-20nm) shows 20 nm transceivers operating at 32 Gbps with just over nine picoseconds of total jitter and extremely low random jitter of 240 femtoseconds. The results show good margin to key industry specifications requited for next-generation 100G systems.

- This news represents a significant milestone for the industry and for the transceiver development team at Altera, says Vince Hu, vice president of product and corporate marketing at Altera.

- These 20 nm devices contain the key IP components that will be included in our next-generation FPGAs and validating them now provides us confidence we will deliver to themarket 20 nm FPGAs on schedule.

Altera’s next-generation transceiver innovations enable system developers to support the rapidly increasing amount of data that is being transmitted through the world’s networks. The transceivers in Altera’s next-generation devices will drive more bandwidth with lower power per channel versus the previous nodes and will also be able to support increasing port density by interfacing directly to 100G CPF2 optical modules.