Stratix IV GT FPGAs from Altera interoperate with QSFP high-speed optical modules

Designers of high-speed telecom applications prefer FPGAs over fixed architecture semiconductor chips due to the programmability factor and other design advantages of FPGAs. FPGA vendors find the telecom application domain as one of the highest revenue generation domain for their products. That's the reason for companies like Xilinx and Altrea to make their devices support high-speed data transmission by incorporating high transceivers inside their chips. Altera has made its Stratix IV GT FPGAs to interoperate with 40G Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) optical modules from Avago Technologies to simplify the interface design. The optical communication module, and more the QSFP is essential in flexible high speed telecom wired network, particularly in the backhaul applications.

The QSFP module transceives signal at rate of 40-Gbps data rates over a single link fiber-optic cable. Now these signals can be piped directly to the Stratix IV GT FPGAs with 11.3-Gbps embedded transceivers with no interoperability headaches and no any bridging ICs required. QSFP is a compact, low form-factor, and hot Z-axis pluggable interface for use in high speed switches, routers, servers and host bus adapters.

Altera says it has tested the interoperability with 40G QSFP optical modules by using a Stratix IV GT FPGA development board. The transmitter and receiver in the development board connected via SMA cables to two QSFP boards featuring 40G QSFP modules from Avago Technologies. The QSFP modules are connected by 30 meters of OM2 multimode optical fiber cable assembly. After more than 100 hours of operation, zero errors were observed, resulting in a bit error rate (BER) exceeding 10E-16.

"Stratix IV GT FPGAs provide an ideal solution to designers of high-performance networking and telecommunications systems who continue to push their system's bandwidth to new limits," said Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of component product marketing at Altera. "The multiple 11.3-Gbps transceivers featured in Stratix IV GT FPGAs give designers the opportunity to connect eight QSFP optical modules to a single FPGA and transport up to 320 Gbps of aggregate data in their system. Obtaining this same level of performance using FPGAs with sub-10-Gbps transceivers requires the use of 32 SFP+ optical modules."