Date: 03/02/2009

FlexEQ technology for signals to travel farther, faster, and error-free

GaAs based RF semiconductor device maker Vitesse Semiconductor has introduced FlexEQ technology, a flexible, high-performance Electronic Dispersion Compensation (EDC) and Adaptive Equalization technology. It is specifically designed to enable communication signals to travel farther, faster, and error-free without upgrading the installed base of connectors, backplanes, and cables. FlexEQ technology transports data at speeds ranging from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps and above. Being deployed today in Vitesse crosspoint, transceiver, and clock and data recovery devices, this technology will feature in future products of Vitesse to be released in 2009.

This technology integrated IC devices are already shipping in volumes. FlexEQ technology can enable bandwidth upgrades on existing backplanes, cables and fiber.

Vitesse's FlexEQ technology has been demonstrated with at least 15 meters of passive cable providing a booster to the current 10GBASE-T based solutions designed for UTP CAT 6/6a or STP CAT 7 which have previously struggled on technical merit, cost, and its very high power consumption (typically over 5 watts).

FlexEQ technology solves the difficult implementation of the Long Reach Multi-mode (LRM) specification in the IEEE P802.3aq 10GBASE-LRM standard
Leading Solution in Long-reach SMF Applications
Ideal for 10 Gigabit Ethernet and SONET/SDH Carrier Ethernet and optical transport networks, Vitesse has incorporated FlexEQ into its single low-power, CMOS-based CDR which is distinguished as a leading solution in long-reach SMF applications. When used for single receive path applications and in 300-pin modules, the production-ready CDR compensates for both SMF chromatic dispersion and polarization-mode dispersion in poor OSNR environments.

FlexEQ has been paired with Vitesse's VScope technology to have an unobstructed view of the internal IC signal compared to oscilloscopes that offer only an extrapolated view of signals from outside the chip.
Vitesse will be demonstrating FlexEQ and VScope technologies in backplane and Twinax cable applicaitons at the DesignCon 2009 show February 3-5, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. In addition, Vitesse will present a paper entitled, "Utilizing Electronic Dispersion Compensation (EDC) and Embedded Waveform Viewing Technologies in Next-Generation Backplanes." Specific presentation time and conference information can be found at the DesignCon website: http://www.designcon.com/2009/.