GPY241 expands MaxLinear’s portfolio of Ethernet physical layer transceivers and switches
MaxLinear announced the extension of its Ethernet portfolio with the GPY241, a quad-port 2.5GBASE-T Ethernet PHY. The new device adds to the Company’s existing portfolio of 1 Gigabit PHYs, 2.5 Gigabit PHYs and 1 Gigabit switches.
The GPY241 is the industry’s first quad-port PHY optimized for 2.5GBASE-T Ethernet and adds USXGMII interface capability. It enables switch and gateway manufacturers to provide multiple cost-effective 2.5G ports in High-Speed Switches, Gateways, and Routers.
The market has recently seen a rapid adoption of 2.5GBASE-T, mostly driven by new and growing broadband applications with bandwidth requirements above 1G such as 10GPON modems, DOSCIS 3.1 cable modems, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax) routers, etc.
The adoption of 2.5G Ethernet will continue to grow as more PCs offer 2.5G Ethernet ports and the demand for 2.5G speeds expands into enterprise and industrial single and multiport applications.
2.5GBase-T Ethernet is clearly emerging as the mainstream, mass-market technology, and as a natural successor to 1Gb Ethernet.
“The market transition from 1G to 2.5G is well underway, with 50 million ports in the market today. It is expected to approach 1 billion ports within the next 5 years,” said James Lougheed, Vice President of Marketing for High Performance Analog at MaxLinear.
“Being the first to offer a quad-port PHY solution optimized for multiport 2.5GbE applications, supporting a cumulative bandwidth of 10Gb, puts us in a unique position to support this fast-growing market.”
The market has recently seen a rapid adoption of 2.5GBASE-T, mostly driven by new and growing broadband applications with bandwidth requirements above 1G such as 10GPON modems, DOSCIS 3.1 cable modems, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax) routers, etc.
The adoption of 2.5G Ethernet will continue to grow as more PCs offer 2.5G Ethernet ports and the demand for 2.5G speeds expands into enterprise and industrial single and multiport applications.
2.5GBase-T Ethernet is clearly emerging as the mainstream, mass-market technology, and as a natural successor to 1Gb Ethernet.
“The market transition from 1G to 2.5G is well underway, with 50 million ports in the market today. It is expected to approach 1 billion ports within the next 5 years,” said James Lougheed, Vice President of Marketing for High Performance Analog at MaxLinear.
“Being the first to offer a quad-port PHY solution optimized for multiport 2.5GbE applications, supporting a cumulative bandwidth of 10Gb, puts us in a unique position to support this fast-growing market.”
Technical details
Like MaxLinear’s existing single-port 2.5GbE PHYs (GPY211, GPY212, and GPY215), the quad-port GPY241 is a feature-rich, cost-performance optimized Ethernet transceiver solution. The GPY241 supports IEEE802.3 modes 2.5GBASE-T, 1000BASE-T, 100BASE-TX and 10BASE-Te.
It provides great interoperability for both high data rate connections and connections to legacy 100BASE-TX and 10BASE-T devices.
In addition, the GPY241 supports timestamp insertion and retrieval according to the IEEE 1588v2 standard to support industrial, transportation and mobile networking applications that require time synchronization.
This new Ethernet PHY can be connected to a switch or gateway MAC interface by either a single four-pin 10G USXGMII-4×2.5G interface or four SGMII+ interfaces.
It includes an on-board low EMI line driver with integrated termination that simplifies PCB design. The device requires only 2 (using SGMII+) or 3 (using USXGMII) power supply rails.
It features an integrated Smart-AZ module to support Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE, IEEE802.3az) with legacy MACs and a smart LED brightness control for link status display.
The GPY241 includes all typical PHY features such as jumbo frames up to 10kB, cable diagnostics, Wake-on-LAN (WoL) support, auto MDI/MDIX, auto polarity reversal and auto down speed for CAT3 or poor cables.
It also features a typical power consumption of 1W per port in 2.5GBASE-T mode. For reduced power consumption during periods of low traffic, Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) is supported for 2.5GBASE-T, 1000BASE-T and 100BASE-TX. Additional power saving can be achieved by using the SoCs Wake-on-LAN (WoL) functionality.
The GPY241 is available now in a compact RoHS compliant 12mm x 12mm FC-BGA-256 package. An industrial grade version, the GPY245, will be available later in 2021.