Inphi Announces New iKON Series of 100G CDR Retimer Line Card Solutions for Next-Generation CFP4 and QSFP28 2-Terabit Line Cards

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 11, 2014) - Inphi Corporation (NYSE: IPHI), a leading provider of high-speed, mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications and computing markets, announced the availability of a new iKON™ family of 100G Clock and Data Recovery (CDR) Retimer ICs targeted at next-generation 2-Terabit line cards. The first product in this series, the Inphi IN112525-LC 100G CMOS CDR Retimer IC, is for 28G line cards that will be architected with CFP4 and QSFP28 modules to accelerate deployment for higher density 100G in data center and enterprise networks.

Inphi will demonstrate the interoperability of its second generation IN112525-LC CDR Retimer IC and family IC solutions with Sumitomo Electric's 100G CFP4 pluggable modules and 100G QSFP28 AOC sub-assemblies, while also showing interoperability with silicon photonics and VCSEL based mid-board optics solutions, at OFC 2014, from March 11-13, 2014 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.

The demonstrations will show Inphi's new line card CDR Retimer interoperating with 100G CFP4 modules and QSFP28 AOC cables over a CEI-28G-VSR electrical interface. Delivering the industry's most aggressive performance metrics on mW/Gbps, Inphi's CDR Retimer ICs support channel loss in excess of 15-db (CEI-28G-SR) at 14Ghz Nyquist, while addressing the MTTFPA (Mean Time To False Packet Acceptance) problem that can be amplified by competing solutions that use multi-tap DFE architectures. This makes the IN112525 CDR IC ideally suited for CFP4 and QSFP28 based daughter and mezzanine card configurations where the host ASICs or switch ICs with 28G SerDes reside at distances well in excess of 28G-VSR specifications from the CFP4 or QSFP28 module. 

"Inphi is excited to announce a new product that will lead the industry transition to 2-T line cards demonstrating continued leadership in advancing our 100G connectivity roadmap and delivering new products to market," said Siddharth Sheth, vice president, Networking Interconnect, Inphi. "This interoperability demonstration is an important milestone, since it shows feasibility of Inphi's CDR Retimer IC working with a variety of optical and copper solutions that will enable the next-generation of line cards for highly scalable data center platforms."

Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., a leading global provider of advanced optical solutions, will showcase its CFP4 LR4 pluggable module and its QSFP28 Extended Data Rate (EDR) AOC products with the indispensable and advanced ASICs by Inphi. Sumitomo Electric announced its high performance and low power consumption, CFP4 and EDR technology for AOC cables in booth #3845 at OFC 2014.

"Sumitomo Electric has demonstrated leadership in pioneering module based optical solutions for the CFP4 and QSFP28 ecosystem," said Nobu Kuwata, general manager of the Technology and Marketing Department of Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations (SEDI). "This interoperability demo between our module based solutions and Inphi's IC solution will play a critical role in advancing the deployment of next-generation high density 100G line cards."

Inphi will also have a private demonstration of the IN112525-LC in its booth to showcase the CDR Retimer IC working over 15+db channels and over 100G BASE-CR4 twin-ax copper cables. The IN112525-LC will also be shown at the Luxtera booth #336 interoperating with 100G mid-board optics solutions.

The IN112525-LC is a low-power CDR Retimer for CFP4 and QSFP28 line cards and features:

• Support for 100G BASE-LR4/ER4 and OTU4 28Gbps operation
• Programmable transmit and adaptive receive equalization on all SerDes interfaces with fine granularity and control which allow channel loss in excess of 15-db at 14Ghz Nyquist
• Self-test modes that allow diagnostic monitoring of channel and system parameters
• Inphi's iSCAN™ GUI and Link Analysis Toolkit for eye-scan and monitor on all SerDes receiver interfaces for link margin and stress testing
• Protocol based receiver signal strength indicators for robust link health diagnosis

The IN112525-LC CDR Retimer is in production.

About Inphi
Inphi Corporation is a leading provider of high-speed, mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications and computing markets. Inphi's end-to-end data transport platform delivers high signal integrity at leading-edge data speeds, addressing performance and bandwidth bottlenecks in networks, from fiber to memory. Inphi's solutions minimize latency in computing environments and enable the rollout of next-generation communications infrastructure. Inphi's solutions provide a vital interface between analog signals and digital information in high-performance systems, such as telecommunications transport systems, enterprise networking equipment, enterprise and data center servers, and storage platforms. To learn more about Inphi, visit www.inphi.com.

Inphi, the Inphi logo and Think fast are registered trademarks of Inphi Corporation. iPHY, iKON, iSCAN and Tri-Rate are also trademarks of Inphi Corporation. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.