Microsemi DIGI-G5 supports 1.2 Tbps of combined OTN, client interfaces

April 19, 2018

Microsemi Corp. (NASDAQ: MSCC) has extended its family of DIGI Optical Transport Network (OTN) silicon with the DIGI-G5, which the company says delivers a 3X increase in capacity while reducing power consumption per port by 50%. In addition to OTN 3.0 and Flexible OTN (FlexO), the device will support 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 50GbE, 200GbE, 400GbE, and Flexible Ethernet (FlexE). The DIGI-G5 will enable designs that support 1.2 Tbps of combined OTN and client interfaces, Microsemi asserts, while offering an integrated security engine.

Microsemi Corp.(NASDAQ: MSCC) has extended its family of DIGI Optical Transport Network (OTN) silicon with the DIGI-G5, which the company says delivers a 3X increase in capacity while reducing power consumption per port by 50%. In addition to OTN 3.0 and Flexible OTN (FlexO), the device will support 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 50GbE, 200GbE, 400GbE, and Flexible Ethernet (FlexE). The DIGI-G5 will enable designs that support 1.2 Tbps of combined OTN and client interfaces, Microsemi asserts, while offering an integrated security engine.

Additional features include 56G PAM4 serializer/deserializer (SerDes) functionality that enables direct connection to QSFP-DD, OSFP, and coherent digital signal processors (DSPs). An integrated packet test set enables remote troubleshooting and debug, while the integrated CrypOTN security engine supports end-to-end AES-256 based encryption and authentication. The device also features integrated G.HAO bandwidth-on-demand processing for OTN switching networks

For implementation ease, Microsemi offers the DIGI OTN Switching Software Development Kit (SDK), which provides an application-driven hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to simplify data path setup to a handful of application program interface (API) calls, according to the company. An onboard ARM® processor enables terabit per second application performance by offloading the host central processing unit (CPU) from such operations as data path provisioning, protection switching, and overhead management.

The DIGI-G5 aims to support what Microsemi expects to be an increase in demand for 100G OTN switched connections, driven by growth in IP/MPLS traffic as well as the upcoming rollouts of 5G mobile networks. The device will enable 400G linecards on the path toward 1-Tbps designs.

"China Mobile operates one of the world's largest OTN switched networks," said Li Han, deputy director of the Network Technology Research Institute, China Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. "To meet bandwidth needs as we enter the 5G and cloud era, our metro network must scale by leveraging new higher speed OTN rates while reducing both cost and power per bit. Microsemi's DIGI-G5 platform will enable our suppliers to build higher capacity scalable systems to support our long-term network expansion needs."

The DIGI-G5 is expected to begin sampling this quarter.

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