Jan 20 2011
Solarflare, the company pioneering 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), today announced it was honored with an Electronic Products Magazine's Product of the Year award for its SFT9104 PHY, the industry's first 40nm quad-port 10GBASE-T PHY chip for the mass adoption and deployment of 10GbE.
Introduced in May 2010, the SFT9104 eliminates power, density and performance barriers with its low power and low latency characteristics.
The editors of Electronic Products, a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers, evaluated over three-hundred products launched in 2010. The winning products were selected on the basis of innovative design, significant advancement in technology or application, and substantial achievement in price and performance. Solarflare's PHY demonstrated success in the analog and mixed-signal interconnects category by enabling ultra-low power consumption, consuming only 2.5 watts per port; multiple data center power reduction modes; and a low latency mode for in-the-rack applications. The SFT9104 breaks down prior performance and cost barriers for 10GbE connectivity and enables a new class of high-density modular switches and servers.
"There are four or five suppliers out there with 40nm process based 10GBASE-T transceivers, but Solarflare seems to be leading the pack with just 2.5 watts at full reach and 1.6 watts for a 10 meter link," said Jim Harrison, editor of Electronic Products. "We like the fact that the PHY dynamically adjusts its power -- if there is a short link, it adjusts the drive. If there is no connection, it enters a low-power sleep mode automatically and will wake up in less than 3 seconds. Back when I was in school, if you told us you could send data at 10G over twisted-pair wire for 100 meters, we would have had you put away in a nice padded cell."
Solarflare's fourth-generation PHY chip is a mixed-signal solution that performs physical layer functions for 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) transmission over standard Ethernet twisted-pair cabling. Compliant with the 10GBASE-T standard, it also supports 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX for 1000 Mbps and 100 Mbps operation respectively. Fully backwards compatible with lower speed Ethernets, the triple speed SFT9104 enables seamless transition of installed Ethernet networks to 10 Gigabit/s speeds by preserving customer investments in existing infrastructures, and eliminating the need for forklift upgrades. Protected by over 25 issued US patents, Solarflare's SFT9104 PHY is able to deliver industry-leading performance at one-third the power consumption of competitive offerings. This is due to Solarflare's unique analog and digital signal processing algorithms that make it possible to implement a powerful communications system using cost-effective technology.
"We are honored to have our PHY named a product of the year, as this validates the work and expertise Solarflare has in the 10GbE market," said George Zimmerman, CTO at Solarflare. "The SFT9104 enables IT and data center managers to take full advantage of existing infrastructures and preserve previous investments, especially since it's easy for customers to integrate into switch and server designs. 2011 is an important year for 10GbE adoption and we're excited to have our products lead the charge."
2010 marks the 35th annual Electronic Products' Product of the Year recognizing the best products in the industry. The 2010 Product of the Year awards were announced in the January 2011 issue of Electronic Products with a cover feature and a brief description of each product.
Source: http://www.solarflare.com/