networkZONE Products for the week of May 30,
2005
BroadLight Inc. Says…
BroadLight Launches the Industry's First End-to-End
GPON Solution Featuring an ONT System-on-Chip
New SoC Delivers the Only Integrated GPON Solution for Customer
Premises ONT Applications
Leveraging its proven PON expertise, BroadLight, Inc., unveiled a complete
end-to-end (E2E) GPON solution that features the BL2000 GPON System-on-Chip
(SoC) for cost focused ONT applications. The highly-integrated E2E GPON
solution consists of PONmaker software, OLT MAC, OLT and ONT transceivers
and the BL2000 family of ONT SoCs. Delivering unprecedented performance
and integration, BroadLight's E2E GPON provides customers with a low-cost
and low-risk solution that will significantly speed their time to market
with ITU-T G.984-compliant GPON equipment.
"Just as BroadLight enabled the ITU-T compliant and interoperable
BPON market in North America, we intend to emerge as the world leader in
GPON," said Andy Vought, CEO of BroadLight. "Our E2E GPON is the
culmination of extensive dialog with customers and carriers and we are currently
engaged with all the major players to win GPON designs. As a result, we
are confident that our SoC development is the right solution for the low-cost
ONT."
E2E GPON is a complete solution for delivering up to 2.5 Gbps of packet
and 155 Mbps of TDM data using GPON Encapsulated Mode (GEM) for up to 64
users on a single PON. E2E GPON enables new and emerging carrier class IP-based
services such as VoIP and IPTV as well as legacy CATV for residential and
native transport of T1/E1/J1 for businesses.
"BroadLight is 100% focused on PON and has been extensively involved
with the FSAN ITU-T initiatives for developing GPON," said Didi Ivancovsky,
founder and VP of Products for BroadLight. "We knew we had to drive
to the lowest cost solution for the Single Family Unit ONT from the start
with a platform powerful and flexible enough to support IP with CoS and
to enable to the easy development of the Small Business Unit Multi-tenant
and Multi-dwelling Unit ONTs for legacy TDM services."
About E2E GPON
E2E GPON consists of the following products to provide a complete end-to-end
ITU-T G.984 compliant GPON for Ethernet and native TDM services:
- BL3000 family of OLT MAC FPGAs with interfaces to support GEM based
transport of Gigabit Ethernet and TDM. Features include; configurable AES,
Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA).
- PONmaker ITU-T G.984 software stacks for OLT and ONT provides control
and management of the PON.
- OLT Transceivers designed with a glueless interface to BroadLight's
GPON MAC.
- ONT SFF MSA compliant Transceivers with 2 wavelengths for all IP services
and a 3-wavelength Transceiver module with embedded RF video receiver based
on BroadLight's proven CATV over PON technology.
- BL2000 family of ONT SoC ASIC for SFU to MxU ONT applications.
- ONT TDM GEM FPGA for T1/E1/J1 services.
About the BL2000 family of GPON SoC
The BL2000 is an application optimized, completely integrated solution
for customers designing ITU-T G.984 compliant ONT equipment. Key features
of the GPON SoC include:
- GPON ITU-T G.984 MAC using GEM adaptation for packet and TDM services.
1.25 and 2.5 Gbps SerDes and CDR circuitry enables glueless interfacing
with low-cost GPON 2 and 3-wavelength transceivers.
- High-performance, packet processor for wire-speed data path classification
and filtering with the bandwidth and processing power required by IPTV
applications.
- 10/100/1000 Ethernet MACs.
- TDM GEM interface for the companion TDM GEM FPGA.
- Embedded CPU for a versatile and effective signaling and control plane
platform.
- Comprehensive software solution that includes BSP for the leading OSs,
low level drivers, boot code and packet bridging.
analogZONE Says . . .
PONs are finally starting to get some market traction
beyond field trials and Asian deployments as cable companies begin to get
serious about delivering triple-play services with enough capacity to drive
several TVs with different programming at the same time. And while BroadLight
has done rather well pushing its earlier generation of BPON MAC and controller chips, they've hitched their
wagon the to the new GPON standard. Besides delivering 2x the data rate,
BroadLight feels that the standard is more closely defined than the EPON
spec, making it much easier for manufacturers to offer interoperable components
and equipment. This, plus a 20% efficiency advantage in the transport protocol
are some of the many reasons that BroadLight's rolled out its BL2000 family
of ONT SoCs.
As
the release above so ably describes, BroadLight has applied the same end-to-end
support philosophy that it used to develop complete reference designs, plus
development and management software for its BPON series to it new GPON product
line. Designed to power CPE boxes that support emerging services such as
IPTV, HDTV and VoIP, and legacy TDM and CATV, the BL2000 Series one-chip
ONT contains just about everything you need to build an ONT, for a home
(SBU), apartment (MDU), or several small businesses (MTU), except for some
inexpensive DDR memory and the requisite PHYs. This includes a CDR &
SerDes, a PON MAC, an embedded MIPS32 controller, and a configurable packet
engine (see Fig. 1).
One
of the nice features of the chip is that it has separate data and control
planes allowing the MIPS controller to concentrate on management and protocol
tasks while the hardwired packet processor handles the actual data manipulation.
The BL-2000's MII/RMII interface supports 2 ports of 10/100 Ethernet, or
1 port of GbE (with a mere 800 Mbit/s worth of maximum capacity). It also
supports VoIP services by passing its voice packets over the Ethernet ports
to IP phones, or out to a standard PBI bus connected to one or more DSPs
and SLICs that drive POTS lines (see Fig. 2). If you're interested in supplying
TDM services, the on-chip GEM interface provides the necessary clock and
data, and only requires an FPGA-based GPON/T1 bridging chip to drive one
or more T1/E1 PHYs.
You
also get a complete development software package called "PON Maker"
that lets you customize the reference design to your needs, or even "roll
your own" ONT from the ground up (see Fig. 3). The development package
includes nifty stuff like a host APIHW abstraction layer, an OS abstraction
layer and a full set of reference code that performs all the basic ONT &
T-CONT functions including:
- Control,
- Ranging & Activation,
- Provisioning,
- AES control,
- Dynamic Bandwidth Management,
- Alarms Monitoring & Fault Handling, and
- Performance Monitoring
And although time and energy don't permit me to
go into detail here, the PON Maker package also contains the software needed
to configure and drive its companion CO-side chip, the BL-3000 OLT transceiver.
Taken together, this new series of offerings from
BroadLight should help designers speed GPON-based products to market, with
reasonable assurance of both interoperability and maximum flexibility. BroadLight's
careful attention to support of packet data, IP-based multimedia, and legacy
TDM services gives it the kind of versatility needed to make PONs cost-competitive
with their arch-nemesis, DSL.
The BL2000 family will be in production December
2005 priced at less than $20 for high volumes.
Data Sheet
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