Industry Expert Blogs

In a move characterized as “not a material financial matter,” FPGA vendor Altera has announced the purchase of Avalon Microelectronics, a Canadian vendor of FPGA-centric IP used to design optical networking equipment. Networking has long been a mainstay application for FPGAs and so this IP acquisition makes a lot of sense for Altera. Avalon’s IP seems to focus on FEC (forward error correction, also known as “channel coding”) algorithms used in optical networking. (FEC algorithms are also big in digital cellular telephony.) Avalon’s FEC IP includes a long list of specialized algorithms unique to optical network design. The company has also put together “virtual ASSPs,” which are complete FPGA-based designs for transponders, multiplexers, and “muxponders” for 100G networks and down.

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