Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation has launched VSC3316, a new 16-port asynchronous crosspoint switch with enhanced FlexEQ signal equalization capabilities. Vitesse designs, and develops high-performance, cost-competitive semiconductor solutions for carrier and enterprise networks.

According to a company press release, the VSC3316 is the highest speed crosspoint available at present. It has 16 lanes, each with the ability to operate independently from DC up to 11.5 Gbps.

The company claims the VSC3316 enables possibilities to expand line card and switch card bandwidth by 75 percent over existing solutions. It also helps to overcome legacy backplane signal integrity issues. The device is ideal for transmitting multi-gigabit data signals over printed circuit boards, backplane connectors and copper cabling used across communications equipment like Core and Metro routers, blade servers, network storage equipment, broadcast video routers, and physical layer switches.

The VSC3316 operates on a single 2.5V supply and is available in a high-density 15mm x 15mm, 196-pin PBGA package.

In the release, Juan Garza, product marketing manager for Vitesse, said since telecom, datacomm, networking and Ethernet protocols converge at the 10 Gbps node, high-performance signal integrity products need to route, switch and clean up these signals at rates up to 11.5 Gbps.

The VSC3316 includes detection/transmission of signal (LOS) providing native Out-of-Band (OOB) support of SAS (News - Alert)/SATA storage protocols. This architecture provides protocol transparent operation, which in turn enables each channel to run independently. Vitesse’s VSC3316 supports a wide frequency range that encompasses almost all data protocols.

The combined functions of crosspoint switching and Vitesse’s FlexEQ adaptive equalization technology make the VSC3316 a cost-effective, low-power signal integrity tool. The VSC3316 incorporates a broadband, fully non-blocking and multicasting switch core and flexible fourth-generation equalization and pre-emphasis I/O capability. The device is able to perform signal fan-out, loop-back and protection switching and also regenerate signals that would otherwise have been compromised by losses in the transmission medium.

The FlexEQ adaptive equalization capability of Vitesse works independently of the data rate. This in turn provides highly effective compensation for deterministic jitter across a wide range of operating conditions without requiring re-tuning. The FlexEQ adaptive equalization technology allows the system designer to compensate for multiple impairments in the signal path, like connectors and cabling or skin effect and dielectric losses in PCB traces. In addition, FlexEQ provides a significantly wider compensation range. This enables a single device to be used in multiple applications.