Rockwell Telecom has standard GaAs chipset

Electronic News, Sept 26, 1994

NEWBURY PARK, CALIF.--Rockwell Telecommunications is intensifying its focus on gallium arsenide (GaAs) telecommunications devices with the introduction of its first digital standard GaAs product targeting the telecom market.

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The new GaAs chipset consists of a multiplexer (RS701) and demultiplexer (RS702). The RS701, which features an on-chip phase comparator, allows communication at 2.5Gbps by converting 16 lines of parallel data into a serial data stream. The RS702, at the receiving end, de-serializes the data into 16 sequential, parallel data lines.

Developed by Rockwell's Microelectronics Technology Center (MTC), the GaAs chipset is designed for use in OC-48 synchronous optical network (SONET) applications, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) standard networks and high-speed transmissions systems.

This latest product rollout follows on the heels of a recent expansion by the company of its Lightning family of commercial GaAs gate arrays, including a device it claims is the industry's fastest gate array--the 5GHz LI1000 digital IC (EN, Aug. 22) targeted at the same telecom market as the chipset.

"This chipset is built on the same HBT process that we are using to develop parts at 10Gb/sec. for SONET OC-192," said Tom Dugan, senior product line manager at MTC. "This process allows us a comfortable performance margin at lower power than previous, older generation, GaAs MESFET (metal semiconductor field effect transistor) processes."

In addition to this process, the company uses a a 52-pin plastic quad flat pack (PQFP) package for the RS701 and RS702 in an attempt to drive down the cost of SONET OC-48 links and make the chipset more affordable to network systems OEMs. The RS701/RS702 uses a low-power current mode logic (CML) for a claimed power consumption of less than 1.25 watts. The chipset is designed to interface to ECL (emitter coupled logic), I/O (input/output) levels or to CMOS devices.

The chipset will be available in sample quantities in October. Pricing is $99 for 50,000-unit quantities. Development test boards will be available in November at $1,990 each.

Rockwell Telecom also unveiled a new member of its NavCor family of satellite global positioning system (GPS) receivers. The five-channel MicroTracker LP, it said, offers continuous power consumption to 0.89 watts at 5 Volts for system OEMs to decrease battery count and overall size of handheld GPS end products.

For further power reduction requirements, the device supports a power management mode consuming 0.438 watts at 5V and "keep-alive" functions of 0.061mW at 3V (for SRAM and RTC) and 0.001mW at 3V (for RTC only).

Rockwell said samples will be available in January 1995, and volume production is expected to begin in March 1995. Pricing is about $316 per unit in 100-piece quantities.