Looking for 4Gb/s serdes

[Allan Herriman]

Hi,

I've been trying to find a SERDES part that is capable of handling
4Gb/s. The usual suspects (Vitesse, et al) seem to only do up to
3.5Gb/s, and then jump to 10Gb/s.

Since 4Gb/s is close to a standard rate (4Gb/s Fibre Channel, which is
actually just over 4Gb/s on the line) I thought that there would be
plenty of SERDES parts, but I can't find them.

Any pointers?

BTW, I can find plenty of IP cores, but I don't want to make an ASIC.
I want a part that I can put on a board.

TIA,
Allan

 

[[email protected]]

Hi,

I've been trying to find a SERDES part that is capable of handling
4Gb/s. The usual suspects (Vitesse, et al) seem to only do up to
3.5Gb/s, and then jump to 10Gb/s.

Since 4Gb/s is close to a standard rate (4Gb/s Fibre Channel, which is
actually just over 4Gb/s on the line) I thought that there would be
plenty of SERDES parts, but I can't find them.

Any pointers?

BTW, I can find plenty of IP cores, but I don't want to make an ASIC.
I want a part that I can put on a board.

TIA,
Allan

How about a FPGA?

 

[Allan Herriman]

How about a FPGA?

I had looked at Virtex-5 from Xilinx, and (according to the latest
datasheet) the fastest speed grade was short of 4Gb/s.
Same for the Lattice parts.

I hadn't considered Altera, however.
The Altera Stratix II GX is claimed to work at over 6Gb/s, so that
might meet my needs.

Thanks,
Allan