CALABASAS, Calif. -- Fulcrum Microsystems today announced an expansion of its FocalPoint Ethernet switch device family with the industry’s first Ethernet switch chips targeted at the coming wave of multi-port optical line termination (OLT) cards for Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) equipment.

With the success of GPON network implementations, equipment manufacturers are migrating from single-port, first-generation OLT cards to multi-port cards that provide higher user density and lower cost. To accommodate this transition and in order to handle the increased density without sacrificing performance, switching must be embedded into the line-card.

Fulcrum has responded to this trend with the FocalPoint FM2103 and FM2104 switches, both of which offer full line-rate performance. The FM2103 is configured for four-port OLT cards with four 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports for access connections and two 10-Gigabit Ethernet XAUI ports for backbone links. The FM2104 is for eight-port OLT boards and features eight 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports with two 10-Gigabit Ethernet XAUI ports.

Both devices feature flexible header processing for Ethernet-to-GPON interworking, allowing the devices to parse the GPON-specific packet header.

In a separate announcement, Fulcrum said it will work jointly with BroadLight, a leading end-to-end PON components vendor, on marketing and technical initiatives that will provide an integrated GPON solution composed of FocalPoint devices alongside BroadLight controllers.

“As GPON technology has proven itself in the market, the demand is growing for higher density solutions, providing a perfect new market to benefit from the performance and cost advantages of our FocalPoint switch family,” said Bud Noren, senior product manager for Fulcrum Microsystems. “The Fulcrum and BroadLight solution is perfectly complementary and is an ideal first step in building the ecosystem that will help us to be successful in this market.”

Fulcrum Microsystems Inc.