Embedded in fiber
The growing trend among fiber IC specialists like Zarlink Semiconductor Inc. and Luxtera Inc. to bundle fiber optic cable, SFP+ transceivers, and photonic interface ICs in a single package for “active optical cabling” has spurred a similar trend among mezzanine card fans. Take a Xilinx Inc. Virtex-5 FPGA, bundle it with multiple channels of fiber interfaces, and embed the resulting transceiver in an XMC/AMC format. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is calling this a rugged transceiver module, but I call it a pretty useful way to handle multiple protocols in a small transceiver.
The common approach in the XMC card and the AOC subsystem is that the protocol controllers for E/O conversion and packet handling are placed very close to the E/O interface. While this would seem to make a lot of sense, FPGAs or network processors for packet processing traditionally have been placed on the line card. This could be the first step in making the line card itself a mezzanine-card format. The interesting trend to observe in the next year or two is how higher-layer protocol processing is partitioned: will all Ethernet MACs or Fibre Channel controllers turn into cores in the FPGA? Will they remain discrete devices, but be placed in the AMC module?
Ultimately, this may have an impact on what is known in desktop realms as the LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM)market. Maybe the networking MAC won’t be next to the primary system processor after all. Maybe it will be embedded in a transceiver module in daughter-card or AMC format. Or maybe it will be embedded in an integrated SFP+ and piece of cable. In any event, an FPGA is likely to be front and center in future designs.
Buy Cialis commented:
pietro commented:
Andy T commented:
