Date: 07/03/2011

FPGA platform for 100G OTN both by Xilinx and Altera

Xilinx and altera are demonstrating their latest design platform for developing 100G OTN networks at Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC) in Los Angeles, California.

Xilinx has made available its Virtex-6 HXT FPGA based Optical Transport Network (OTN) design platform for designing 100G line cards and also migration path for designing 400G line cards. OTN Targeted Design Platform from Xilinx includes a Virtex-6 HXT FPGA development board with pre-defined and implemented reference designs for different OTN solutions, such as 100G ODU switching from Xilinx, 100G Ethernet to OTU4 transponders and 10x10 to OTU4 transponders.

Altera is showcasing its 100Gbps Enhanced Forward Error Correction (EFEC) demonstration specifically designed for 100Gbps metro and long-haul OTN.
And Altera is also demonstrating 100Gbps Ethernet media access control (MAC) and physical coding sublayer (PCS) to Interlaken demonstration. Utilizing Altera's Stratix IV GT FPGAs with integrated 10Gbps transceivers, this demonstration will showcase a single chip bridge design for 100Gbps applications, and illustrate the benefits of FPGAs for Ethernet bridging and aggregation applications.

The video content on net is expected to rise like a tsunami triggering both wireless and wired networks with insatiable demand for bandwidth and this forcing network operators and service providers quickly adopt 100G and also the next gen 400G line cards.

FPGA based solution is preferred over ASIC due to this kind market demand where design got to change for high speed at the speed of internet content growth. Xilinx and Altera tapping this market fully by providing enough support for developers.

Both Xilinx and Altera after launching their new 28nm FPGA are competing neck to neck in markets such as this