Agilent's HDMP-3002 Ethernet-over-Sonet (EoS) framer/mapper, aimed at OC-48 (2.5-Gbit/second) equipment designs, follows the company's January release of the HDMP-3001, which focused on existing OC-3 (155-Mbit/s) equipment.

The HDMP-3002 provides full-duplex mapping of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet frames encapsulated into STS-48/12/3 Sonet/SDH payloads using the generic frame procedure (GFP), frame-delineated high-level data link controller, or the link-access procedure for SDH (LAPS) protocol. The device can connect up to four Gigabit Ethernet feeds into one STS-48/STM-16, four STS-12/STM-4, or four STS-3/STM-1 channels. The part is also equipped with virtual concatenation features that enable end users to allocate bandwidth streams with a granularity as small as STS-1.

The framer/mapper IC is equipped with a Sonet/SDH framer/pointer processor with clock- and data-recovery circuitry. The chip features a 1.8-volt core voltage and is 2.5-V or 3.3-V I/O tolerant.

Aside from serving as a standalone product, some equipment manufacturers are looking to link four of the HDMP-3002 devices into a digital cross connect, said Jim Shupenis, strategic business development manager at Agilent. With this configuration, designers can avoid terminating all STS channels, Shupenis said.

TranSwitch has also introduced a OC-48 device with the release of it EtherMap-48 framer/mapper IC. The chip supports up to four ports of Gigabit Ethernet traffic and up to 24 ports of Fast Ethernet traffic. On-chip Gigabit Ethernet MACs are equipped with flow control, thus allowing the framer/mapper to support oversubscription of Ethernet streams, the company said.

One interesting aspect of the EtherMAP-48 is its ability to work in storage-area networking (SAN) applications. While most EoS framers/mappers focus on merging the traditional datacom and telecom worlds, the EtherMap-48 can also work in SAN switches, mapping block-encoded data traffic through the transparent-mode GFP. Thus, the IC can handle up to four 8B/10B-encoded Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or ESCON clients.

The EtherMap-48 supports the link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS) as well as multiple configurations of virtual concatenation groups. The part's core voltage is 1.3 V and its I/Os are 2.5-V or 3.3-V tolerant.

Unusual focus

Multilink is sailing a different path in the EoS arena. While other competitors are focusing on OC-48 and slower rates, Multilink is eyeing 10-Gbit/s designs with the release of its VCat-10 OC-192 framer/mapper.

Many other players have leaned away from 10-Gbit/s rates, and are looking instead to help carriers improve the capabilities of existing OC-48, OC-12 and OC-3 networks. In fact, Shupenis said he was not sure of OC-192 would be the next step for Agilent's framer/mappers.

Nevertheless, Multilink said it is moving forward with its development of OC-192 EoS framers/mappers for two reasons. First, the company wants to win over new designs focused on OC-192, said Tom Spencer, senior marketing manager at Multilink. Second, the company is focusing on customers building boxes that sit closer to the metro core than to the customer, he said.

The VCat-10 supports virtual concatenation and LCAS. It can build virtual concatenation groups with a granularity of STS-1/VC-3 or 3c/VC-4. The part also supports Layer 2 processing capabilities such as GFP, packet-over-Sonet and LAPS.

VCat-10 delivers an SPI 4.2 interface for transferring data into and out of the device, as well as an SFI 4 interface. Its core voltage is 1.5 V and its I/Os are 2.5-V or 3.3-V tolerant.

Pricing, production

Agilent has just received the first silicon on the HDMP-3002. It plans to start general sampling in late August and mass production by the end of this year. The device costs $475 each in 1,000-unit quantities.

TranSwitch will start customer trials of the EtherMap-48 in the first quarter of 2003. The part is priced at $550 each in 1,000s.

Multilink will have the first engineering samples of the VCat-10 in the fourth quarter of 2002. Pricing information was not disclosed.