Fremont, Calif. — Ikanos Communications, Inc. has released its next-generation family of highly integrated, low-power VDSL access chipsets. The sixth-generation Ikanos Velocity chipsets, targeted at high-density central office (CO) devices, provide up to 100 Mbits/s symmetric bandwidth and operate at sub 1-watt (W) per port, which the company claims as the lowest power consumption of any A/VDSL device on the market.
Low-power consumption is important for massive FTTH or FTTx deployment, said Dr. Manouchehr Rafie, director of strategic products and technologies, at Ikanos Communications Inc. “We’re introducing innovative technology for energy savings in both the hardware and software. It’s a new topology architecture where we’re using a new chipset, new firmware and software that enables you to automatically switch the power between different modes — normal operation, low power and standby.”
Ikanos said the Velocity chipsets are the first CO A/VDSL semiconductor devices compliant with European Code of Conduct (CoC) power consumption standards. Fully compliant with the European CoC power consumption levels (L0/L2/L3) through 2011, Ikanos said the Velocity chipsets’ power profile offers over 30 percent power savings compared to the next best A/VDSL chipset.
Rafie said the power savings of the CO VDSL2 chipset is 500 milliwatts (mW)/per port for the 17a profile and over 600 mW for the 30a profile. The highly integrated chipset (8-port integrated AFE/IFE, 2-port line driver) also enables 33 percent fewer chips for 8p/16p/48p platforms, he said.
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One of the big headaches that telcos have is the reliability and robustness of the link, or always-on connectivity, said Rafie. Telcos cannot tolerate more than one resync per day, he added.
The Velocity chipsets include the company’s proprietary Ikanos Quality Video (iQV) technology, which is said to deliver high stability and robustness for data-intensive triple play applications, including multi-channel high-definition IPTV, high-speed data transmission, video on demand (VoD) and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Rafie said the new iQV technology combines multiple mitigation techniques, including ITU G.inp compliant retransmission and Rapid Rate Adaptation (RRA), to avoid any resync issue on the line card, enabling service providers to deliver robust deployment of premium services. The technology shows no degradation in image quality, even in very noisy conditions, he said.
“All telco service providers worldwide in order to increase their revenues have to introduce some differentiated value-added services,” said Rafie. “For most of them, the focus is on IPTV applications. To make that a reality, there are a few ingredients that have to come into the picture including higher bandwidth,” he said.
The high-performance symmetrical 100/100 Mbits/s and asymmetrical 100/50 Mbits/s Velocity chipsets are said to provide dramatically improved long-range performance surpassing all loop conditions specified in the Broadband Forum’s WT-114 VDSL2 Performance Test Plan. The chipsets are fully compliant with the WT-115 VDSL2 Functionality Test Plan, while operating in any of the VDSL2 spectral profiles (8, 12, 17 and 30 MHz).
The Velocity chipsets are software compatible to Ikanos’ prior generation of CO chipsets. The chipsets, which support all ADSL and VDSL profiles, also are designed to complement Ikanos’ line of residential gateway chipsets, including the highly integrated Fusiv Vx180.
Availability: Evaluation boards and samples for both the 100/100 Mbits/s symmetrical (FX100100-6) and 100/50 Mbits/s asymmetrical (FX10050-6) Velocity chipsets are available now. Volume product for Japan is expected by the end of 2009 or early 2010, and mid-year 2010 for ROW.
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