Marvell's first Inphi chips following its acquisition

Marvell unveiled three new devices at the recent OFC virtual conference and show.

One chip is its latest coherent digital signal processor (DSP), dubbed Deneb.

Nigel AlvaresThe other two chips, for use within the data centre, are a PAM-4 (4-level pulse-amplitude modulation) DSP, and a 1.6-terabit Ethernet physical layer device (PHY).

The chips are Marvell’s first announced Inphi products since it acquired the company in April.

Inphi’s acquisition adds $0.7 billion to Marvell’s $3 billion annual revenues while the more than 1,000 staff brings the total number of employees to 6,000.

Marvell spends 30 per cent of its revenues on R&D.

Acquisitions

Inphi is the latest of a series of Marvell acquisitions as it focusses on data infrastructure.

Marvell acquired two custom ASIC companies in 2019: Avera Semiconductor, originally the ASIC group of IBM Microelectronics, and Aquantia that has multi-gigabit PHY expertise.

A year earlier Marvell acquired processing and security chip player, Cavium Networks. Cavium had acquired storage specialist, QLogic, in 2017.

These acquisitions have more than doubled Marvell’s staff. Inphi brings electro-optics expertise for the data centre and optical transport and helps Marvell address the cloud and on-premises data centre markets as well as the 5G carrier market.

Marvell is also targeting the enterprise/ campus market and what it highlights as a growth area, automotive. Nigel Alvares, vice president of solutions at Marvell, notes the growing importance of in-vehicle networking, what he calls a 'data-centre-on-wheels'.

“Inphi’s technology could also help us in automotive as optical technologies are used for self-driving initiatives in future,” says Alvares.

Inphi also brings integration, co-packaging and multi-chip module expertise.

 Marvell's chip services. Source: Marvell.

Merchant chip and custom ASIC offerings

Cloud operators and 5G equipment vendors are increasingly developing custom chip designs. Marvell says it is combining its portfolio with their intellectual property (IP) to develop and build custom ICs.

Accordingly, in addition to its merchant chips such as the three OFC-announced devices, Marvell partners with cloud players or 5G vendors, providing them with key IP blocks that are integrated with their custom IP. Marvell can also build the ASICs.

Another chip-design business model Marvell offers is the integration of different hardware in a multi-chip package. The components include a custom ASIC, merchant silicon, high-speed memory and third-party chiplets.

“We co-package and deliver it to a cloud hyperscaler or a 5G technical company,” says Alvares.

Marvell says this chip strategy serves two market sectors: the cloud hyperscalers and the telcos.

Cloud players are developing custom solutions as they become more vertically integrated. They also have deep pockets. But they can’t do everything because they are not chip experts so they partner with companies like Marvell.

“The five to 10 hyperscalers in the world, they are doing so much creative stuff to optimise applications that they need custom silicon,” says Alvares.

The telcos, in contrast, are struggling to grow their revenues and favour merchant ICs, given they no longer have the R&D budgets of the past.

It is this split in the marketplace which Marvell is targeting its various chip services.

OFC announcements 

At OFC, Marvell announced the Deneb coherent DSP, used for optical transport including the linking of equipment between data centres.

The Deneb DSP is designed with open standards in mind and complements the 400-gigabit CMOS Canopus DSP announced by Inphi in 2019.

Deneb adds the oFEC forward error correction scheme to support open standards such as OpenZR+, 100-gigabit ZR, the 400-gigabit OpenROADM MSA and CableLabs’ 100-gigabit standard. 

Michael Furlong

The 100-gigabit ZR is targeted at the 5G access market and mobile backhaul. Like the OIF 400G ZR, it supports reaches of 80-120km but uses quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation.

“Not only do we support 100 gigabit [coherent] but we also have added the full industrial temperature range, from -40oC to 85oC,” says Michael Furlong, associated vice president, product marketing at Marvell.

The Deneb DSP is sampling now. Both the Deneb and Canopus DSPs will have a role in the marketplace, says Furlong.

Atlas PAM-4 DSP and the 1.6-terabit PHY

Marvell also announced at OFC the Atlas PAM-4 DSP and a dual 800-gigabit PHY devices used within the data centre.

Atlas advances Marvell’s existing family of Polaris PAM-4 DSPs in that it integrates physical media devices. “We are integrating [in CMOS] the trans-impedance amplifier (TIA) and laser drivers,” says Alvares.

Using the 200-gigabit Atlas reduces an optical module design from three chips to two; the Atlas comprises a transmit chip and a receiver chip (see diagram below). Using the Atlas chips reduces the module’s bill of materials, while power consumption is reduced by a quarter.

Source: Marvell.

The Atlas chips, now sampling, are not packaged but offered as bare die and will be used for 200-gigabit SR4 and FR4 modules.

Meanwhile, Marvell’s 1.6-terabit PHY - the 88X93160, - is a dual 800-gigabit copper DSP that performs retimer and gearbox functions.

“We view this as the key data centre building block for the next decade,” says Alvares. “The world is just starting to design 100-gigabit serial for their infrastructure.”

The device, supporting 16, 100-gigabit lanes, is the industry’s first 100-gigabit serial retimer, says Marvell.

The device drives copper cable and backplanes and is being adopted for links between the server and the top-of-tack switch or to connect switches in the data centre.

The device is suitable for next-generation 400-gigabit and 800-gigabit Ethernet links that use 100-gigabit electrical serialisers-deserialisers (serdes).

The 5nm CMOS device supports over a 38dB (decibel) link budget and reduces I/O power by 40 per cent compared to a 50-gigabit Nigel PAM4-based PHY.

The 100-gigabit serdes design will also be used with Marvell's Prestera switch portfolio.