Intel, the world's largest chip maker, has set its sights on optical communications. Over the last year or so the US computing giant has built up optical capability in-house through a series of acquisitions. Now the Optical Products Group formed out of these purchases is releasing a set of silicon products.
"If you go back five years, Intel had no activities in the optical space," explained Malcolm Hay, European marketing manager for the company's Optical Products Group. "But clearly optical was a fast growing technology, so we have made it a major focus moving forward."
To date, Intel has bought six companies: Giga, Softcom, nSerial, Cognet, LightLogic and Level One Communications. The purchases brought with them a background in technologies such as high-speed processing, optical transponders, forward-error correction and wrapping, mux/demuxes, laser drivers, and amplifiers using a range of process technologies including bipolar, silicon germanium and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor). And of course, Intel's proprietary silicon expertise underlies all of this.
"There's been a lot of frantic activity behind the scenes to organize all these different capabilities into one coherent strategy, and we're now at the stage where that's been done and the product announcements are starting to come," said Hay. "One of our strengths is that we are a strong silicon design and manufacturing company. And now we've also got all of the automated module and automated alignment manufacturing in-house."
All-round solution
The products under development are based around a multiprotocol approach, where a single device can be used with OC-192 Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) data, either native or with forward-error correction, or with 10 Gigabit Ethernet signals. Although these protocols all run at about 10 Gbit/s, they are not exactly the same - previously, each needed the use of different components.
Intel's TXN13303 transceiver, on the other hand, operates at either 9.95, 10.3 or 10.7 Gbit/s by incorporating three customized jitter filters. It's targeted at short-reach and metro-area networks. "If you look at the metro environment today, it's all SONET and SDH out there," Hay explained, "but 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the new kid on the block, and it has a real bright future ahead of it."
"There's a debate right now about who's going to win in the metro area, SONET/SDH or 10 Gigabit Ethernet," he continued. "The aim is to enable the migration of Gigabit Ethernet into the metro area - networks don't change overnight, but they can transition gradually if the new equipment can run the old [protocols] as well as the new."
What is clear, however, is that although metro networks are nearly 100% SONET/SDH at the moment, 10 Gigabit Ethernet will take more and more of that share. Hay predicts that the two are going to live together in the metro area for the foreseeable future.
Intel is also developing the silicon-chip controllers that sit behind the transceiver and perform all the framing and protocol processing needed to produce a complete line-card solution. These will also be able to handle multiple data rates and protocols.
"To make a system capable of the different standards, the back-end silicon has got to be capable of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, SONET/SDH, framing and so on," explained Hay. "We're working on a product which will deliver those capabilities, and it will be out next year."
The company has also announced the first CMOS chipset for 10 Gbit/s applications. The chipset consists of a laser driver, a transimpedance amplifier and a limiting amplifier, all of which are also protocol-independent. According to Hay, using CMOS technology requires about 1/20 of the power needed for typical bipolar systems, lowering cost and space requirements.
On the up
A recent survey by US technology consultancy Gartner Group put Intel at number three in communications silicon supplied to the telecoms industry. Hay is convinced that the company can push its way up the league. "We were number four a year ago, so the trend is in a good direction, and we had the fastest growth rate of the top five vendors," he said.
"Optical is certainly one of the big revenue generators, so all the activities in optical are one part of the thrust to move up the chain," he explained. "The whole network processor arena also has huge potential. With this wide range of things, we think we're in a strong place to go forward - as a company, if Intel moves into any market, the aim is to be a major player."
•Intel has announced third quarter revenues of USD 6.5 billion, down 25% from Q3 last year and up 3% from the preceding quarter. Net income for Q3 was USD 655 million, down 77% from 2000 and 23% sequentially.
•This article originally appeared in FibreSystems Europe December 2001 p51