Altera optical FPGA in 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic demo

Altera is demonstrating its optical FPGA at OFC/NFOEC, being held in Los Angeles this week. The FPGA, coupled to parallel optical interfaces, is being used to send and receive 100 Gigabit Ethernet packets of various sizes. 

The technology demonstrator comprises an Altera Stratix IV FPGA with 28, 11.3Gbps electrical transceivers coupled to two Avago Technologies' MicroPod optical modules. 

"FPGAs are now being used for full system level solutions"

Kevin Cackovic, Altera

The MicroPods - a 12x10Gbps transmitter and a 12x10Gbps optical transceiver - are co-packaged with the FPGA. "All the interconnect between the serdes and the optics are on the package, not on the board," says Steve Sharp, marketing program manager, fiber optic products division at Avago.  Such a design benefits signal integrity and power consumption, he says:  "It opens up a different world for FPGA users, and for system integration for optic users."

Both Altera and Avago stress that the optical FPGA has been designed deliberately using proven technologies. "We wanted to focus on demonstrating the integration of the optics, not pushing either of the process technologies to the absolute edge," says Sharp.

The nature of FPGA designs has changed in recent years, says Kevin Cackovic, senior strategic marketing manager of Altera's transmission business unit.  Many designs no longer use FPGAs solely to interface application-specific standard products to ASICs, or as a co-processor.  "FPGAs are now being used for full system level solutions, things like a framer or MAC technology, forward error correction at very high rates, mapper engines, packet processing and traffic management," he says.

Having its FPGAs in such designs has highlighted for Altera current and upcoming system bottlenecks. "This is what is driving our interest in looking at this technology and what is possible integrating the optics into the FPGA," says Cackovic. Applications requiring the higher bandwidth and the greater reach of optical - rack-to-rack rather than chip-to-module - include next-generation video, cloud computing and 3D gaming, he says.

Altera has still to announce its product plans regarding the optical FPGA dsign. Meanwhile Avago says it is looking at higher-speed versions of MicroPod.

"The request for higher line rates is obviously there," says Sharp. "Whether it goes all the way to 28 [Gigabit] or one of the steps in-between, we are not sure yet."