As 40G Ethernet gains momentum in the trading industry, LDA Technologies introduces the 40 - 10 - 40 Gigabit Ethernet rate converter: a solution providing the lowest possible latency in 10G infrastructure on 40G exchange lines.
Powered by the NEO platform and based on LDA's unique 644 MHz / 16bit 10G Ethernet IP core, this solution provides conversion between 40 Gb and 10 Gb Ethernet protocols with unmatched latency of under 50 ns.
40GbE → 10GbE conversion is cut-through with the latency measured from the first byte in - to the first byte out.
10GbE → 40GbE conversion is implemented using the “smart prebuffering” technique. The solution analyzes the Ethernet frame for latency-critical protocols such as IPv4 and expected packet length. Since 40G Ethernet is precisely four times faster than 10G, ¾ of the packet is prebuffered before releasing it into a 40G medium. In the time required for the 40G side to forward the prebuffered data, the remaining quarter of the packet arrives and goes straight into 40G medium, thus compensating for serialization delay and providing under 50ns last-to-last latency.
Protocols that are not latency-critical (such as ARP, IGMP) are processed in store-and-forward mode, so the packet is wholly prebuffered on the 10G Ethernet side before being released to 40Gb.
For each incoming 40G line, the rate converter supports 8/16 outgoing 10G ports, thus providing rebroadcasting functionality on 40G to 10G direction and muxing functionality on the way from 10G to 40G.
There is a large buffer on 40G → 10G direction that absorbs the bursts happening on the 40Gb side, which allows minimizing packet losses that may occur due to significant data rate difference.
The solution offers received packets, CRC errors, dropped packets, forwarded packets, and data rate statistics per port.
Highlights
- 0 ns exchange to client latency
- Client to exchange “smart prebuffering”
- One 40G Exchange port
- Eight or sixteen 10G Client port options*
- Fiber Lane Alignment Assistant
- Client 40G port Skew and Latency Monitor
- Statistics for all ports
- SNMP
*Latency of 16-port option is 3 ns higher
