Aquantia Demonstrates Performance Of Low-Power 10GBASE-T PHY

Milpitas, CA - Aquantia will demonstrate its AQ1000 family of PHYs at Interop Las Vegas on April 29 through May 1 in a multi-vendor configuration featuring the leaders in the network test industry. Aquantia's AQ1001 is the company's first low-power monolithic 10GBASE-T PHY designed for mainstream applications such as dual-port NICs or high-density switches. The demonstration at Interop will feature the AQ1001 operating over 100m of Category 6A UTP cabling, with network test provided by the Ixia 10GBASE-T Ethernet LAN Services Load Module and the Spirent TestCenter's High Density 2-port 10GBASE-T Personality Module (GBT-4100A).

The configuration chosen for Aquantia's suite at Interop achieves a number of milestones. OEMs considering 10GBASE-T have been demanding the low power and manufacturability of the AQ1001, which is demonstrated both on 100m of CAT6A cable, as well as with the shorter channels common within the Data Center. OEMs also demand robust performance and vendor interoperability. Aquantia's suite will host the industry's first demonstration of the robust nature of the IEEE standard 802.3an-2006 with operation among three vendors.

"Interoperability demonstration of the AQ1000 family of PHYs with Ixia and Spirent, the two leaders in network test, marks a critical milestone in the validation of our low-power 10GBASE-T solution in the marketplace," said Phil Delansay, president and CEO of Aquantia. "Our suite at Interop not only showcases the capability of our devices to enable mainstream platforms, but also shows the ability of 10GBASE-T and the familiar RJ45 to assume their place as the leading interconnect for 10-Gigabit Ethernet applications."

Aquantia's AQ1000 family of 10GBASE-T PHYs features low power in a compact 21mm BGA package. These are monolithic designs implemented in the mature 90nm CMOS process. The innovative architecture delivers the low power of 5.5W for a maximum distance of 100m of Category 6A cable. This low power enables 10GBASE-T within mainstream applications such as dual-port NICs, 16-port line cards, and 24-port aggregation switches. This is the first low-power monolithic 10GBASE-T PHY to be sampled into the marketplace. The AQ1001 is sampling now.

"As the market leader in 1 GbE and 10 GbE Ethernet testing solutions (according to Frost & Sullivan), we are proud to claim Aquantia as an early adopter of Ixia's 10GBASE-T Ethernet Adapter," said Anupam Sahai, vice president of Marketing, Ixia. "When combined with our 10 GbE LAN Services Module, the solution provides exceptional performance and flexibility. Each of the module's test ports supports wire-speed layer 2-3 traffic generation and analysis, high performance routing/bridging protocol emulation, and high performance layer 4-7 application traffic generation and subscriber emulation."

Aquantia's next-generation product, the AQ1002, will feature multi-rate 100M/1GE/10GE operation with Wake-on-LAN (WOL) capabilities. The AQ1002 is socket- and firmware-compatible with the AQ1001 and will be sampling in the third quarter.

"As the first test system vendor to offer 10GBASE-T testing capabilities, Spirent is always looking for opportunities to advance this technology," said Tim Jefferson, general manager, Converged Core Solution, Spirent Communications. "With the industry's most accurate latency and lowest time stamp resolution, Spirent TestCenter enables innovative companies such as Aquantia to differentiate their performance at 100m and validate their interoperability with other vendors."

Aquantia will host private demonstrations in its suite (ER2482) on the show floor at Interop Las Vegas on April 29 through May 1. Contact Aquantia at Interop@aquantia.com for an appointment to see a demonstration.

SOURCE: Aquantia