Altera's Stratix III FPGAs Support SGMII on LVDS I/Os

Seamless Interface to Triple-Speed Ethernet Physical Layer Devices

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- May 05, 2008 -- Altera Corporation  today announced its Stratix® III FPGAs support Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface (SGMII) on its LVDS I/Os. Offering interface speeds of 1.25 Gbps and meeting SGMII’s stringent jitter performance requirements, Stratix III LVDS I/Os support triple-speed Ethernet (10/100/1000 Mbps) interfaces without transceivers. Stratix III FPGAs are the industry’s first programmable logic devices able to support Gigabit Ethernet SGMII on LVDS pins, offering lower costs, lower power and more interfaces per device.

The SGMII I/Os featured in Stratix III FPGAs allow the device to connect to Gigabit Ethernet ports through small form-factor pluggable (SFP) optical modules. Using Stratix III FPGA’s LVDS channels, customers can integrate a large number of Gigabit Ethernet channels in high-port-count applications, such as 96-port SGMII switches.

“Stratix III FPGAs were designed to deliver tremendous value to customers with an unmatched combination of low power, high performance and high density,” said David Greenfield, senior director of product marketing, high-end products, at Altera Corporation. “The high data rate speeds and low jitter performance offered by Stratix III FPGA’s LVDS I/Os provide wireline applications a cost-effective SGMII Gigabit Ethernet interface.”

Stratix III FPGA LVDS channels support Gigabit Ethernet SGMII as a result of the architecture’s low jitter performance, dynamic phase aligner (DPA) and soft clock-data recovery (CDR) mode. Soft-CDR, which is implemented in the programmable fabric as IP, supports SGMII by extracting the clock out of the clock-embedded data.

Availability

Altera’s Stratix III FPGAs, offering Gigabit Ethernet SGMII connectivity on its LVDS I/Os, are available now. To view a demonstration video showing how to build a 96-port SGMII Gigabit Ethernet with Stratix III FPGAs, visit www.altera.com/b/stxiii-sgmii-poweropt-videos.html. For additional information about Altera’s high-density, high-performance Stratix III FPGAs and their support for SGMII, visit www.altera.com/technology/high_speed/protocols/sgmii/pro-sgmii.html.

About Altera

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