August 4, 2011 -- The emergence and demand for 40G/ 100G systems is being driven by two main factors. The first is the increasing demand for higher data bandwidth driven by applications such as YouTube, Facebook and IP-TV and secondly, by business and government demands for increasingly complex data-intensive applications such as weather prediction, financial analysis, genomics research and design simulation. The recent emergence of cloud computing further adds to the communications challenge.

One of the key challenges with supporting 40G/100G links is that the SerDes must not only support emerging standards such as XLAUI (40G Ethernet) and CAUI (100G Ethernet) but must continue to support current and legacy interfaces such as 1-Gbps Ethernet (SGMII) and 10-Gbps Ethernet (XAUI). Multi-protocol support is essential to managing the transition to higher data rates while still supporting legacy standards.