December 4, 2008 -- 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) silicon provider Solarflare Communications has announced general availability of its second-generation 10GBASE-T PHY product to switch and server customers, including original design manufacturers (ODMs). The company says its 10Xpress SFT9001 has completed extensive package and silicon reliability testing to support volume production of forthcoming 10GBASE-T switch and adapter products.
The SFT9001 is billed as a low-power 65-nm 10GBASE-T PHY, and is the second product from Solarflare that exceeds IEEE 802.3an 10GBASE-T specifications. According to the company, at half the power consumption of other offerings, the chip has multiple power modes, including a sub 4 watt low-power mode.
Solarflare says its standard-compliant PHY supports 100-meter reach over copper Ethernet cabling and features triple-speed auto-negotiation for 10GBASE-T, 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX. Leveraging the architecture of the previously-shipped SFX7001 PHY, the SFT9001 supports both new and existing copper cabling specified for deployment in building networks, including unshielded Category 5e, Category 6, Category 6A and Category 7.
The company contends that the compactly housed chip consumes 50 percent less power than other offerings as a result of its proprietary advanced noise cancellation architecture. This architecture includes patented low-power echo suppression and superior immunity to noise from cell phones, which has plagued other 10GBASE-T implementations, maintains Solarflare.
Other key features of the PHY include power scaling down to hundreds of milliwatts and support for Wake-on-LAN, both critical for making network equipment power efficient. In addition, Solarflare's PHY provides 10GBASE-T advanced cable diagnostics to help ease deployment and reduce network downtime by assessing line characteristics.
"There are several factors driving up demand for 10-GbE, including server virtualization, high-performance computing, storage convergence, video on demand and algorithmic market trading," comments Russell Stern, CEO of Solarflare. "Our customers continue to tell us low power, robustness, reliability and standards compliance are important factors for 10GbE solutions. We have repeatedly proven that our products excel in meeting these four criteria. At less than 4 watts, this is the lowest-power 10GBASE-T part on the market, and we are now the only company to have shipped two generations of PHY products that run at distances exceeding 100 meters under worst-case channel conditions."
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