AMCC Intros 10G Components

LAS VEGAS -- Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ:AMCC), a global leader in embedded Power Architecture processing, transport and storage solutions, today announced the QT2055, a XAUI-to-10GBASE-KR physical layer IC. The QT2055 is the first product in the industry developed for 10 Gigabit Ethernet serial backplane connectivity. It is based on the recently completed IEEE® Std. 802.3ap-2007 standard. QT2055 applications include blade servers and high-performance computing systems, as well as telecom and datacom platform backplanes. The QT2055 will be featured in a live demonstration at AMCC’s booth # 663 and at the Backplane Ethernet Pod in the Ethernet Alliance® booth # 2265 at Interop® 2007 in Las Vegas May 22 – 24.

“Our new QT2055 IC strengthens AMCC’s market leadership position by offering the industry’s broadest portfolio of 10 Gigabit Ethernet PHY products,” said Mitch Kahn, vice president of marketing for AMCC. “This introduction reinforces AMCC’s commitment to the enterprise Ethernet market and delivers a cost effective, robust and best-in-class solution that enables our customers to leverage 10 Gigabit speeds over the backplane.”

“Shipment of 10GE ports doubled last year and 10GE demand continues unabated. In a recent study we did, respondents planned large increases in the number of 10GE ports in their networks,” stated Matthias Machowinski, Directing Analyst, Enterprise Voice & Data at Infonetics Research. “Datacenters will be a key area for these deployments and in order to avoid bottlenecks and process at that speed, organizations will need to upgrade server to server connections and blade server clusters, which will drive demand for 10GBASE-KR.”

The Ethernet Alliance booth demonstration will feature a pair of AMCC’s QT2055 Evaluation Boards connected to a state-of-the-art reference I-Tracbackplane from Molex® and the Z-Pack Max™ backplane from Tyco Electronics®. The QT2055s will utilize the 10GBASE-KR standard for backplane serial connectivity between the two boards driving error-free traffic at 10 Gigabit speeds.

AMCC will also demonstrate a backplane Ethernet ecosystem in their booth. A Tehuti Networks™ TN3016 controller will transmit data to an AMCC QT2055 Evaluation Board. The 10GBASE-KR signal from the QT2055 is sent across the backplane to an AMCC/Fulcrum reference switch platform based on Fulcrum’s FocalPoint FM2224 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch IC and AMCC’s QT2035S 10Gbps SFP+ PHY. The Fulcrum switch will forward the data to another Tehuti Networks controller. The result is a complete end-to-end, server-switch-server 10 Gigabit Ethernet network solution.“With this announcement from AMCC, the ecosystem for 10GBASE-KR is now in place and ready for widespread industry adoption,” stated Ryan Price, product manager, Molex Incorporated. “Our new backplane combined with AMCC’s QT2055 chip is a compelling solution for our customers who want to drive 10 Gigabit Ethernet capacity through the backplane at lower costs.”

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC)