CAMARILLO, Calif. -- Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq:VTSS - News) today announced the VSC7142 Dual Repeater/Retimer to address some of the toughest signal integrity problems OEMs face when designing Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet products: low signal amplitude and high jitter. The VSC7142 enables OEMs to gain design margin beyond industry specifications, increase product yields and shorten product release cycles. This evolutionary device is designed for bi-directional signal clean-up of duplex serial signals for a wide variety of applications, including links between systems, boards and chips using fiber optics, copper cable or printed circuit boards. The VSC7142 can also be used at multiple locations within systems, backplanes or at bulkheads that require strict compliance with tight signal quality specifications.The primary application for the VSC7142 is high port-count Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet switches in which serial data is transmitted across multiple connectors and long circuit-board traces before reaching its destination. These circuitous routes often result in poor signal quality that subsequently reduce overall reliability and increase error rates. To positively affect signal quality, the VSC7142 can either retime or repeat a signal to guarantee that it meets the electrical specification for Gigabit Ethernet (1.25 Gb/s) or Fibre Channel (1.0625 or 2.125 Gb/s).The VSC7142 features two user-configurable FibreTimer® Repeater/ Retimer cells to offer maximum application flexibility to the OEM. In either Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel applications, the device may be placed in repeater mode such that recovered serial data is re-transmitted synchronously to a recovered clock, providing reduced jitter and improved amplitude characteristics. Similarly, for Fibre Channel-only applications, the retimer mode re-transmits recovered data synchronously to a local reference clock to eliminate jitter transfer and ensure compliance with the Fibre Channel signal quality specifications. Fibre Channel Fill Words are added or dropped to synchronize the recovered data to the local clock. The high- performance, all-digital design of the FibreTimer cells provides the technology basis for control over voltage, process and temperature variations.Other advanced features such as analog/digital signal detectors, speed selectors and speed detectors allows for easy integration of the VSC7142 into end user systems. To further simplify the designers' job at the system level, loopback operation modes in each data path provide for the verification of serial link integrity prior to normal operation. The small size (10 mm) of the chip allows it to be placed end-to-end in high-density systems where small form factor pluggable modules are placed side-by-side."The VSC7142 provides an immediate solution for applications in high port-count systems where signals originate far from bulkhead connectors and compromise signal quality compliance," commented Bob Rumer, director of strategic marketing for the Datacom Products Division of Vitesse. "JBODs, SBODs, Switches and Serial Backplanes can integrate these small, easy-to-use devices to improve amplitude and reduce jitter in Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet applications."Vitesse Semiconductor Corp.