Vitesse Semiconductor Corp of Camarillo, California has announced that SCI Systems Inc, Huntsville, Alabama has developed a pair of universal high speed integrated circuits for serial data transfer rates of up to 500m data bits per second using high-integration Vitesse Gallium Arsenide arrays. The new devices are said to be unique in that, unlike Silicon bipolar devices, they operate at very high speeds while consuming very little power. The chip set, an Encoder and Decoder, provides a simplex parallel-to-serial serial-to-parallel point-to-point link designed for use with coaxial or fibre optic cable in high speed serial communications. The Encoder accepts 9-bit parallel data, encodes it using a custom encoding scheme, and outputs a serial data bit stream. The Decoder provides the complement function, decoding the serial data into the original parallel data. Both devices use a proprietary 9Byte/10Byte encoding scheme, and the scheme produces serial data which is DC balanced, said to increase overall system reliability. The devices are assembled in 164-pin ceramic leaded chip carriers developed by Vitesse and typically dissipate less than 2W each. The GaAs chip set, intended for transmission of digitised video and telemetry data from fibre optic guided missiles, has additional applications in avionics, spacecraft, tethered vehicles and other uses. SCI uses the Vitesse’ Fury VSC5K gate array to implement the two devices.
