Agere Systems Intros FlexPHY PHY Transceiver IC

Agere Systems (Allentown, PA) introduced the FlexPHY PHY transceiver IC, which is claimed by the company to reduce space and power by more than 50 percent over existing two-chip solutions. The IC also improves on the jitter margins and power consumption performance of the company's previous devices. Manufactured using a 0.13µm CMOS process, the PHY transceiver supports a wide range of protocols, range and reach, and addresses 10GbE, 10Gb Fibre Channel, OC-192, OC-192 FEC and G.709 FEC rates.

Jitter generation is measured to be 30 milli-unit intervals (mUI) peak-to-peak, significantly lower than the >50 mUI peak-to-peak offered by competing single-chip CMOS devices. The FlexPHY incorporates a limiting amplifier with a sensitivity <10mV and programmable amplitude threshold adjustment, and has a power consumption of 1W.