Passave, Inc., a market leader in fiber to the home (FTTH) semiconductors for the broadband access network market, is introducing a pair of Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) devices, the PAS5211 optical line terminal (OLT) and the PAS6211 optical network terminal (ONT), that will deliver 2.5-gigabit-per-second bandwidth for GPON-compatible FTTH equipment. Using Passave's field-proven GigaPASS^TM architecture, the two new products will provide interoperability for GPON central-office (CO) equipment and GPON customer premise equipment (CPE).

"This introduction is consistent with our goal of making low-cost FTTH broadly available," said Ariel Maislos, president of Passave, Inc. "We already have established our gigabit EPON (GE-PON) technology as a volume leader in Japan, today's leading high-volume FTTH market. These new devices will leverage our success in developing gigabit PON devices for emerging FTTH markets, such as North America, where service providers are in the process of evaluating ITU-compatible GPON as an FTTH deployment technology."

"Passave has extensive experience with the gigabit broadband access market, based on its success in Asia with EPON devices," said Danny Briere, CEO of TeleChoice, Inc., a telecommunications strategy consultancy that tracks the PON market closely. "You'll see that experience map to their GPON products."

Developing a low-cost, high-performance GPON FTTH semiconductor is a significant technical challenge because it requires single-chip integration of gigabit and faster point-to-multipoint Passive Optical Network (PON) transmission topologies at a price-point suitable for consumer premise equipment such as access modems. Passave's field-proven GigaPASS architecture delivers gigabit and higher transmission rates, provides wire speed protocol processing, and supports mixed-mode PON traffic.

"High-definition IPTV is the killer application driving demand for PON in North America," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research. "Multi-gigabit service enables carriers to simultaneously deliver IPTV, data, and voice to their customers. Passave was the first silicon supplier to deliver gigabit-line-rate devices for Passive Optical Network (PON) equipment in volume, with its GigaPASS-based GE-PON devices."

The GigaPASS FTTH Device Architecture

The GigaPASS architecture integrates multiple gigabit and faster packet-processing engines to deliver wire speed packet processing supporting IP and Ethernet protocol processing tasks. The GigaPASS architecture also incorporates the complex PON circuitry required for high-throughput passive optical networking and provides a programmable control processor with standard operating systems and extensible middleware platforms. This integrated system-on-chip architecture enables flexible performance characteristics and programmable feature sets.

Programmability is critical for service providers, who differentiate their services by incorporating special features and functions in hardware and firmware to support their service portfolios, and GigaPASS-based devices will help carriers to future-proof their access network equipment. Another feature, programmable DBA (dynamic bandwidth allocation), gives service providers the flexibility to scale bandwidth to the changing needs of customers dynamically in software and without the need for a "forklift upgrade."

Key features of Passave's new GigaPASS-based GPON devices under development include:

-- GigaPASS architecture for wire speed performance at 2.5 gigabits/second downstream and 1.25 gigabits/second upstream

-- An embedded, high-performance processor running Linux and VxWorks

-- Forward error correction, which enables carriers to double the reach or number of customers that the network can support

-- AES-128 encryption

-- FSAN ITU-T G.984 standard compliance

Pricing and Delivery

The Passave PAS5211 OLT and PAS6211 ONT devices will be available in 2006. Pricing for the PAS5211 OLT starts at $300 and for the PAS6211 ONT pricing starts at $30 in 10,000-piece quantities.