Freescale’s comms processors match PHYs for faster Ethernet over legacy cable
Freescale’s 28-nm QorIQ T1 family of multicore communications processors are the first embedded System on Chips (SoCs) to demonstrate interoperability with the recently-releases Aquantia AQrate 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet PHY products.
Achieving this Ethernet performance over existing Category 5e twisted pair copper cabling means customers for next generation Ethernet switches and appliances, WLAN access points, wireless LAN controllers, small cells and other applications will not incur the added cost of installing updated cable or using multiple twisted pair links to support increased network traffic demands that are pushing data rates beyond today’s 1 Gbps network uplinks.
“It’s clear the demand for higher speed Ethernet will boom over the next several years. For example, in 2015 the market for new 802.11ac enabled access will take off, driving wireless access point backhaul bandwidth well above 1 Gbps. And by 2018, we expect to see more than 20 million new 802.11ac access points shipping each year,” said Matthias Machowinski, Directing Analyst for Enterprise Networks at Infonetics Research. “New technologies such as the 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet that Freescale and Aquantia have demonstrated will help network managers bridge the gap between wired and wireless access network performance.”
Freescale’s QorIQ T1 family processors integrate between one and four cores and are designed to deliver two to four times the performance of existing, similar-class devices for 5 to 8 Gbps IP forwarding, all within a low power envelope and housed in cost-effective packaging. These QorIQ T1 series multicore processors offer options supporting 1G, 2.5G, 5G and 10G interfaces, as well as a protocol-offload engine that delivers the higher bandwidth encrypted tunnels that enterprise and wireless customers require.
next… Aquantia’s PHYs…
“[demonstrating] this new level of AQrate PHY performance over common CAT5e with the popular Freescale QorIQ T1 processors,” according to Kamal Dalmia, VP Sales & Marketing at Aquantia. “[sets an] interoperability proof point …[that]…gives confidence to OEM equipment designers as they plan to support 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet-ready systems.”
Aquantia’s AQrate PHY combines 2.5 GbE and 5 GbE, as well as IEEE-compliant 10GBASE-T, 1000BASE-T (1GbE), and 100BASE-TX (100MbE) for transmission over up to 100m of twisted pair cabling. The AQrate PHY family integrates such features as Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), 1588v2, MACsec and supports all PoE standards up to 60 W.
Introducing its devices, Aquantia said “Aqrate is game-changing enterprise technology to break mobile infrastructure bottleneck and deliver unprecedented throughput…. a 5-fold increase in speed to WiFi access points on legacy cable infrastructure”. The 5x factor is quoted relative to current Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) solutions without requiring any change to existing copper cabling infrastructure.
Foreseeing the enormous potential for deploying next generation 802.11ac APs on legacy cabling infrastructure, Aquantia devised AQrate to transmit Ethernet data at 2.5 and 5 Gigabit/sec. (2.5GbE and 5GbE) over Cat5e cables up to 100m in length. AQrate also integrates Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology, which is a critical feature in WLAN access point deployments.
Quad – AQR405 is housed in a 25mm flip-chip BGA package enabling efficient high density design for high port-count and compact campus LAN and wiring closet Ethernet switches;
Dual – Wireless Access Points, compact switches, and multiple applications use the low power of AQR205 to create passively cooled solutions. Its 19mm flip-chip BGA package features flexible system interfaces including full KR (with auto-negotiation)/XFI/RXAUI/XAUI/2500BASE-X and SGMII;
Single – The 19mm AQR105 is pin compatible to AQR205 providing the option for single or dual-port solutions with minimal design edits. The AQR105 features flexible system interfaces including full KR (with auto-negotiation)/XFI/RXAUI/XAUI/2500BASE-X and SGMII.
Freescale; www.freescale.com
Aquantia; www.aquantia.com
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