Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced that it has achieved a major turning point in transceiver technology by successfully demonstrating 25Gbps transceiver performance using programmable logic for the first time in the industry. Altera was able to achieve this pivotal performance using its 28nm transceiver test chip, which serves as the prototyping platform used to implement 28Gbps transceivers with 28nm FPGAs. 25Gbps represents more than double the transceiver performance of current FPGA solutions and is equal to or surpasses the performance of competing ASSP products. A demo video of the 28nm transceiver test chip can be viewed on the Altera website.
Altera's 28nm transceiver test chip allows for a thorough examination of how high-performance transceiver designs operate on TSMC's advanced 28nm high-performance (HP) process. Using the results from this test chip, Altera will be able to develop and apply optimization techniques for power, jitter, and link performance during the production tape-out of Stratix V FPGAs equipped with 28Gbps transceivers.
Christian Urricariet, Marketing Director for High-Speed Optical Devices at Finisar, stated, "The performance Altera achieves with its 28nm transceiver technology will raise expectations for the rest of the chip industry looking to support next-generation 4x25Gbps high-density, low-power optical modules. By joining forces to provide high-bandwidth, low-cost optical communication solutions ahead of everyone else, Altera and Finisar are [leading] the way data centers are designed and implemented."