TriQuint will debut transmit/receive chipset pair

Electronic News, August 8, 1994

SANTA CLARA, CALIF.-- TriQuint Semiconductor will today introduce a pair of transmit/receive chipsets including one operating at more than 1-gigabaud/sec. and suitable for use in emerging asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. In addition, Triquint revealed it will shortly introduce an encoder/decoder (ENDEC), dubbed TQ9303, to allow the company's new transmit/receive chipsets to interface with other vendors' controllers.

TriQuint's new chipsets, the FC531 and FC1063, operating at 531 megabaud/sec and 1.0625 Gbaud/sec. respectively, are targeted at applications such as high speed computer networks, disk drives and storage subsystem interconnection, mainframe channel communications and point-to-point proprietary links.

With the addition of the FC531 and FC1063, TriQuint joins Hewlett-Packard, Vitesse, AT&T and others in the Fibre Channel FC-0/FC-1 marketplace. However, TriQuint claims in Fibre Channel transmit and receive chipsets, it is offering capability across a speed spectrum from 266Mbaud/sec. to 1Gbaud/sec.

According to Sunil Sanghavi, marketing director for TriQuint's Computer and Networking division. "The addition of these two new products completes TriQuint's first wave of Fibre Channel FC-0 devices. TriQuint has produced the popular FC266 chipset for over two years. The FC266 operates at Fibre Channel's quarter-speed rate of 265.625Mbaud. TriQuint has shipped more of these quarter-speed FC-0 devices than any other vendor and is the current market leader for Fibre Channel transmit and receive chipsets."

Mr. Sanghavi also said TriQuint will shortly roll out another addition to its family of communications products. "The FC531 and FC1063 chipset will interface to other vendors' Fibre Channel controllers (layers FC-1 through FC-4 of the standard) or to TriQuint's soon-to-be-introduced TQ9303 ENDEC chip."

The FC531 chipset consists of the TQ9301 transmit device and the TQ9302 receive device. A second chipset, the FC1063, consists of the TQ9501 transmit chip and the TQ9502 receive device. Both implement the FC-0 layer of the ANSI X3T11 Fibre Channel (FC) standard.

Designed using TriQuint's proprietary 0.7-micron gallium arsenide (GaAs) process, the FC531 and FC1063 transmitters and receivers are said by the company to run at higher speeds and lower power than is possible with competitive bipolar and BiCMOS approaches.

The transmitters perform parallel-to-parallel conversion and generate the internal high-speed clock required for serial output. The receivers perform serial-to-parallel conversion, recover the clock and data from the serial input and detect the K28.5 character.

In both devices, the transmit/receive data rate is selected at 10 bits to conserve input and output power and to reduce pin count and package size. In addition, they use TriQuint's on-chip phase-locked loop (PLL) approach. Both chipsets have a direct interface with the soon-to-be-introduced TriQuint TQ9303 ENDEC and provide a synchronous data bus interface. The combination of these devices will support FC-1 layer and will partially support FC-2 layer applications.

Both chipsets have been designed to run from a single 5-volt power supply and have power dissipation of 2.25 watts (typical) at 1.0625Gbaud. for combined Tx and Rx. In terms of environmental characteristics, the devices operate over a temperature range of 0 to 70 degrees centigrade. In addition, they feature low deterministic jitter of 75 ps (max.).

Both chipsets are currently available and come in a 44-lead MQUAD package; priced starting at $56 in 1,000-piece quantities for the FC531, and starting at $73 for the FC1063 in same quantities.