Vativ Technologies (www.vativ.com) recently announced that it has begun customer sampling of a single-chip 10-Gigabit Ethernet transceiver for full-duplex operation over unshielded twisted-pair cable. Targeted customers for the V10LAN transceiver are OEMs and system vendors developing high-speed Ethernet switches and servers for the enterprise data-center market.
"Our V10LAN transceiver enables the use of widely available, low-cost Cat 5e and Cat 6 cables, as well as off-the-shelf RJ-45 connectors," said Sreen Raghavan, Vativ Technologies' president and CEO. "This makes solutions based on the V10LAN the most economical for 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbones, costing less than a tenth the equivalent short-reach optical solution."
The company says a backbone based on its transceiver provides an attractive alternative to a 10GBase-CX4 solution by enabling IT managers to implement short-reach 10GbE links over UTP cables.
Vativ currently is working with early adopters, who are producing V10LAN-based XENPAK copper modules and 10GbE network interface cards for the data-center market.
The new Vativ transceiver includes a standard two-wire management data input/output (MDIO) interface for diagnostic information, status monitoring, and control. The V10LAN's architecture permits easy implementation in a XENPAK form factor with the support of MSA-specific I/O and registers, Vativ says.
The V10LAN is priced at $135 in quantities of 1,000. Customer samples and evaluation modules are available now, with volume production scheduled for the third quarter of this year.