Vitesse Announces Availability of Crosspoint Switch

Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation, provider of semiconductor solutions for Carrier and Enterprise Ethernet networks, announced the availability of its product 11.5 Gbps 144x144 crosspoint switch offering a 40 percent bandwidth improvement in switches used in Carrier and Enterprise networking environments.

The device features Vitesse’s signal integrity technology, FlexEQ, which allows transmission and signal recovery of high-speed signals over lossy printed circuit boards, backplanes and cable media. 

The industry is migrating from 4G Fiber Channel to 8G Fiber Channel; from 1 Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, or “GbE,” and interfaces shifting from XAUI to XFI. The VSC3144-11 is the only available device to support switching of these new data rates and interfaces.

Juan Garza, product marketing manager, Vitesse, said that there is a fundamental shift underway across Carrier and Physical Layer interconnects. 

"Across the board, 10G is seen as a convergence point across multiple protocols,” Garza said. “New signal integrity challenges come into play at these speeds and Vitesse is uniquely positioned to help customers overcome these barriers.” 

The new VSC3144-11 crosspoint has a non-blocking switch matrix that delivers 1.656 Terabit per second switching capacity, the highest-capacity semiconductor device. It is also compatible with the 6.5G and 8.5G versions and allows a migration path for existing customers as they upgrade network routers and data center cross connect systems to higher capacity and bandwidth levels. 

Used together, these advanced crosspoints allow low-latency, fully non-blocking switching capability on line cards and switch cards that are pervasive in core, metro and enterprise environments.

The VSC3144-11 supports a frequency range up to 11.5 Gbps encompassing virtually all data protocols, including GbE, XAUI, Reduced XAUI, 10 GbE, SONET/SDH and OTN protocols, InfiniBand as well as emerging services such as 8G Fiber Channel. 

 “Coupled with backwards compatibility to previous generation crosspoints for central switches and new offerings for line cards, Vitesse is delivering a comprehensive migration path sure to take our customers to this new networking paradigm,” Garza said.

With crosspoint switch and signal integrity breakthroughs, the VSC3144-11 is the latest flagship product.