31 Jan 2012

Texas Instruments signal conditioners promise best performance at lowest power

Texas Instruments has introduced ten signal conditioners designed to drive high-speed interface standards such as 10G/40G/100G Ethernet, 10G-KR (802.3ap), InfiniBand, Fibre Channel and CPRI.

The new integrated circuits (ICs) combat signal impairments caused by insertion loss, jitter, reflections and crosstalk in high-speed enterprise servers, routers and switches.

Manufactured using TI’s high-performance BiCMOS SiGe process technology, these new signal conditioners deliver the industry’s highest signal reach performance at less than 6mW per gigabit.

“As transmission rates increase, signal integrity requirements become more stringent,” said Linley Group Senior Analyst Jag Bolaria. “Highly integrated ASIC and ASSP solutions with shrinking transistor geometries, lower voltage rails and lower output voltages further compound the problem, making systems more susceptible to random jitter and crosstalk interference. TI’s new retimer and repeater products resolve these complex signal integrity impairments while consuming low power.”

Key features and benefits of the DS1xxDF410, DS1xxRT410 and DS100KRxxx families:

• Extend reach to exceed 50+ inches of FR-4 backplane or 20 meters of 26-AWG copper cable 36-dB input EQ and 12-dB output de-emphasis (DE).

• Multi-tap decision feedback equalizer (DFE).

• Clock and data recovery (CDR) with internal clock synthesis.

• Repeaters consume 65mW per channel; retimers with CDR consume 150-mW per channel.

• Fully adaptive EQ simplifies link tuning.

• Internal clock synthesis avoids the need for an external reference clock.

• Built-in eye monitor and PRBS generator simplifies system debug.

• Single power supply without the need for external RF chokes.

These signal conditioners are used to drive optical and direct-attach passive copper cables in latency-sensitive, front-port line cards, while meeting SFF8431 (SFP+) specifications. They also can be used to compensate for loss and crosstalk in backplanes, and reduce gauge thickness in active copper cable assemblies.

Offered as a pin-compatible IC family, system designers can choose from repeaters (EQ and DE driver), retimers (EQ, CDR and DE driver), and advanced retimers (EQ, CDR, DFE and DE driver) to achieve the desired link performance and system cost without having to redesign their board.

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