Lucent Picks Xilinx FPGAs

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world's leading programmable logic supplier, announced today that Lucent Technologies has selected Xilinx® FPGAs for its new 10Gb/s Tunable Optical Translator Unit, a key component in one of its Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)-based metro optical equipment offerings. At the core of this advanced design is a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro™ FPGA, with the embedded IBM PowerPC running Linux.

The Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA helped meet Lucent's design needs of reducing the footprint of the control and communication logic, providing backward compatibility to existing deployed equipment, along with incorporating a high-performance processor architecture and providing improved in-circuit programming and debugging capabilities. Optical equipment customers are continually asking for lower cost and smaller footprint solutions that can be scaled to greater capabilities. Prior designs of this complexity had required a parent-daughter PCB configuration, which had size limitations, manufacturing drawbacks and cost implications, but the Xilinx solution addresses that problem, helping to dramatically reduce the footprint and cost of the overall design.

"Our decision to use the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro with embedded PowerPC processor for the control and communications functions in our 10Gb/s Tunable Optical Translator Unit enabled us to meet demanding customer requirements," said Mike Libeskind, a member of the technical staff at Lucent. "Moreover, the Xilinx applications engineering assistance and on-site design support we received were critical in helping us meet our product specifications and schedules. The use of the Xilinx FPGA-based solution enabled us to go to a single board, saving substantial development, manufacturing and test costs."

Lucent Technologies Inc.