networkZONE Products for the week of September 9, 2002

AMCC Says . . .
Channelizing Champ: - AMCC's OC-12 SONET Mapper/Framer does PDH to DS-0 For Higher Density, More Versatility

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) has expanded its communications IC domain to include the deeply channelized metro and access markets. The introduction of the Evros (S1208) mapper represents a natural extension of AMCC's popular framer and mapper expertise and product portfolio, delivering the significant levels of capital and operational cost savings typical of AMCC's best-in-class solutions. The single-chip Evros is an extremely dense solution to hit the market, representing a multi-generational leap in integration, flexibility, and power and real estate savings over existing five-chip devices. A universal device in the market today, Evros supports channelization requirements for TDM transport or data termination applications, and industry standard SONET/SDH to PDH mappings, alarms and diagnostics.

"Service providers want better control over how they provision and groom bandwidth at the network edge as they meet growing demand for high speed services. RHK predicts copper ports at speeds greater than T1 (1.44Mbps) will grow at 30 percent annually to 2005, while fiber at DS-3 and above will grow by 16 percent," said Roy Rubenstein, senior analyst, RHK optical transport semiconductors. "The availability of deeply channelized ICs such as AMCC's, with the ability to groom data from DS-0 levels up to STS-12c, will provide such flexibility for metro-edge add-drop multiplexer platforms."

Best-In-Class Features and Benefits:

• OEMs and service providers can take advantage of the "One-Board-Does-All" approach - and consequential real estate, equipment and operational costs - with the device's flexible allocation of channels, processing any valid combination of OC-12 down to DS1/E1 (with DS0 level visibility) traffic in a single chip.
• Significantly reduces the size, cost and power of new metro transport systems.
  Provides up to 80% savings in real estate and power over competing solutions, making it the industry's lowest power mapper for deeply channelized applications.
• High density, standards compliant channelization of SONET/SDH signals to PDH (DS3/E3, DS1/E1/J1) tributaries enables additional client interfaces on Add-Drop Multiplexers (ADM) and Multi-Service Provisioning Platforms (MSPP).
• Local SONET (high- and low-order) grooming allows for the efficient packaging of traffic onto fiber-optic rings.
• Evros will allow for the adding of VT level cross-connect capability to existing SONET cross-connects; high-density wide-band cross-connects can be built to service a large number of customers on multiple rings.
• Evros serves the channelization and termination requirements for data (ATM, Frame Relay, IP/PPP) applications.

"The growing need for deeply channelized and dense solutions is becoming more evident to support the demand for client access in the Metro," said Amit Banerjee, director of marketing for AMCC. "The high density integration offered by Evros further demonstrates AMCC's commitment to delivering superior flexibility and cost efficiency for the transport segment of the network, and will play a key role in expanding our portfolio to provide a complete solution for the data termination markets."

Evros implements extremely high density and standards compliant channelization of 622Mbps SONET/SDH (an STS-12/ STM-4 or quad STS-4/STM-1) optical connections following SONET/SDH (STS-1 to VT/TU) or PDH (DS3/E3 to DS1/ E1/J1). The device supports SONET/SDH overhead processing, mapping of up to 12 DS3/E3 and up to 336 DS1/J1 and 252 E1 tributaries through the VT/TU or M13 paths. Loopbacks and loop-timing is supported on tributaries. Evros has 336 DS1/J1 framers and 252 E1 framers. The device's built-in features support full bandwidth Transmux, VT Pointer Processing, and DS1/E1/J1, DS3/E3 and VT/TU Performance Monitoring. An efficient and easy-to-use system interface, with visibility into each TDM tributary, is used for connecting to system back-plane or other devices. Evros supports North American, European and Asian standards.

analogZONE Says . . .

AMCC has tended to concentrate its efforts on the upper end of the SONET/SDH market, but in introducing the EVROS OC-12 Framer /Mapper, they have wisely chosen to pay attention to some of the important and interesting trends occurring at the bottom of the food chain. It's no secret that much of the carrier's interest is focused on equipment that mines the most value out of its existing infrastructure, and EVROS's ability to efficiently process concatenated OC-3 and OC-12 streams should make it attractive to equipment manufacturers making high-density line card upgrades for just such applications.

The chip's ability to support deep channelization of an OC-12 or multiple OC-3s down to the DS-0 level allows existing ADMs to be upgraded to handle higher densities. A clever on-chip cross-connects allow aggregation and grouping of multiple channels at DS-1/E1 and VT levels and higher. A second cross-connect enables conversion of any DS1within a DS3 into VT mapped SONET.

With increased pressure on manufacturers to introduce features that reduce operational costs, EVROS's extensive performance monitoring capabilities should also prove popular. The ability to communicate results either in-band and out of band will let designers tailor their products' monitoring capabilities to their customer's requirements. The S1208 is sampling in CBGA-624.

Data Sheet

Lee's Saltshaker Rating

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