PMC-Sierra delivers silicon for 10 Gigabit EPON

PMC-Sierra has announced the availability of symmetric 10 Gigabit EPON chips. The devices complete the company's 10 Gigabit PON portfolio which also includes XGPON designs.

The 10G-EPON devices comprise two PAS9000 optical networking unit (ONU) and four PAS8000 optical line terminal (OLT) chips that support asymmetrical and symmetrical 10G-EPON: 10Gbps downstream (to the user) and 1Gbps upstream, and 10Gbps downstream and upstream, respectively. PMC-Sierra claims it is the first to market with a dual-mode 10G-EPON ONU device.

The PAS9000 optical network unit chip architecture. There are two devices in the family. One, the PAS9401, also supports 10G-EPON symmetric mode. Source: PMC-Sierra.

PON Market 

PMC-Sierra says that the total market for PON is set for strong growth through 2015. 

Using market data from Gartner and IDC, PMC says the 2010 market for EPON silicon was US $120M, growing to $180M for EPON and 10G-EPON speeds in 2015. In contrast, the GPON market was $35M in 2010 but will total $175M for both GPON and XGPON by 2015.  

"China is going to be a very large market [for PON] compared to elsewhere," says Rammy Bahalul, senior marketing manager, FTTH division at PMC-Sierra.

Field trials of 10G-EPON have already been conducted in South Korea, Japan and China, says Bahalul: "We see Japan being the first to move to 10G-EPON, followed by Korea and China." 

PMC expects 10G-EPON deployments to start in 2013, with the first application being multi-dwelling units. Meanwhile, the company expects first deployments of XGPON in 2014, with field trials starting in 2013. China is expected to deploy XGPON first, followed by North America. 

10G-EPON ICs

The 40nm CMOS PAS8000 OLT family comprises four devices.

The PAS8301 and PAS8311 support asymmetric (1Gbps upstream) 10G-EPON. The two chips differ in that the PAS8311 has an on-chip traffic manager/ packet processor which inspects and classifies packets as well as rate-limits particular service flows. 

The remaining two devices, the PAS8401 and PAS8411, support symmetric and asymmetric modes. However, the PAS8401 does not include the traffic manager/ packet processor. 

All four have the Power Save mode which PMC claims halves the power consumption compared to existing ONUs. For example, it allows the ONU to be shut down when appropriate. The OLT devices also support synchronisation protocols required for mobile backhaul.  

Another feature of the PAS8000 family is an on-chip optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR). The OTDR function enables operators to locate fibre faults without using standalone test equipment, and can diagnose the nature and location of a fault to within a 2m accuracy, says Bahalul.

The PAS9000 ONU family comprises two devices: the asymmetric PAS9301 and the asymmetric/ symmetric PAS9401. The devices support the power save mode and mobile backhaul. And by delivering 10G-EPON symmetric and asymmetric modes, the PAS9401 ONU IC enables operators to plan five years ahead using silicon available now, says Bahalul. 

Meanwhile, the company's XGPON OLT and ONU are asymmetric designs - 10Gbps downstream and 2.5Gbps upstream. The system-on-chip XGPON versions have still to be taped out with the designs currently implemented as FPGAs. The XGPON design was part of a recent successful interoperability test, conducted by industry body FSAN (Full Service Access Network), says PMC.

PMC-Sierra says it has a single software development kit that allows software developed on one platform to be reused across all its products.