Broadband product provider Marvell (Quote) said it is introducing what it calls the industry's smallest Gigabit over copper transceiver device.
The new device will enable, for the first time, a new Gigabit Ethernet application -- the 1000BASE-T small form factor pluggable (SFP) module, officials said.
Marvell's Alaska Ultra device, the 88E1011S, features physical dimensions of only 9 mm x 9 mm, or 81 mm squared of PC board (PCB) real estate, making it the only device small enough to fit into the SFP module form factor. The Alaska Ultra is nine times smaller than competing 27 mm x 27 mm (or 729 mm squared of PCB real estate) single-channel Gigabit Ethernet transceivers currently in production, officials said.
The hot-swappable, plug and play, single-port SFP module used in today's Gigabit-over-fiber applications, benefits the user and/or systems manufacturer by offering flexibility in the selection of fiber media type (short or long wavelength optics) to support required cabling distances. And, with the availability of the 9 mm x 9 mm Alaska Ultra transceiver device, future versions of the SFP module will provide the user with a solution where copper and fiber connections are interchangeable, Marvell said.
The SFP module also offers several significant advantages over its predecessor, the GBIC (Gigabit Interface Converter), including lower cost, lower power and smaller size, which is approximately one-half the size of the GBIC. The width of the SFP module connector is slightly smaller than the width of an RJ45 connector. Thus, with the SFP form factor, both fiber and copper Gigabit systems may be developed, featuring similar port densities as copper-only systems using RJ45 connectors.
The Marvell Alaska Ultra transceiver, the 88E1011S, is supplied in a 96-lead BCC package with physical dimensions of only 9 mm x 9 mm. The device is priced at $29.00 at the 1,000-piece quantity and is currently sampling.
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