National Semiconductor's Utopia Bus SerDes Controller

National Semiconductor's new Utopia-LVDS (low-voltage differential signaling) bridge for telecom applications is designed for broadband access equipment, ATM switches, 3G base stations and xDSL access-concentrators and provides a Utopia Bus Level 2 serializer/deserializer (SerDes) for transmitting data over LVDS links as long as 16 meters. The company says that the new device will allow telecom customers to increase port density, minimize PCB space, reduce power consumption by 40 percent, and cut system data transfer costs in half. National's DS92UT16 Utopia-LVDS bridge also transports flow control information, extended 64-Byte cells, and an embedded communications channel across the LVDS link. Extended cell support, along with built-in address translation, lets the bridge address as many as 248 physical layer (PHY) ports. Other features include faster serial bit rates and support for high-density xDSL line cards. National says the Utopia-LVDS bridge simplifies the board interconnect between the PHY and the ATM layer devices by serializing and deserializing the 56-signal Utopia Level 2 bus, allowing two differential transmission lines to carry the bi-directional bus over a backplane or cable to another DS92UT16 transceiver to complete the Bridge. The DS92UT16 features redundant main and standby serial connections, built-in-self-test (BIST), and performance monitoring. The performance monitoring serves to detect and report bit error rates during live traffic.