Gennum Delivers Industry’s First Receiver on a Chip-based ROSA Product for 10 Gigabit Fiber Optic Applications

‘Rchip’ Provides Unparalleled Performance to Enable 10GbE Adoption

BURLINGTON, Ontario, February 19, 2008 — Pushing performance limits for 10 gigabit per second (Gb/s) applications, Gennum Corporation (TSX: GND) has developed a line of receive optical sub-assembly (ROSA) products for high-speed data communications applications that features the industry’s most advanced transimpedance amplifier (TIA). The industry’s first 10Gb/s "receiver on a chip" is an innovative product featuring a single assembly that integrates the photo diode, TIA and passives on a stacked die. With this approach, customers gain significant performance advantages from the new ROSA solutions including best-in-class sensitivity and very high gain. The new offerings will be demonstrated at next week’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition being held February 24-26 in San Diego.

Today, ROSA solutions are typically comprised of four to five discrete components and have traditionally experienced significant manufacturing and test issues as a result of this fragmented approach. This additional cost and test time have hindered the industry’s ability to rapidly adopt 10GbE in high-volume manufacturing. Specifically, today’s ROSA offerings experience wide performance variation across a number of parameters that often negatively impacts the manufacturing yield of modules.

The industry’s first receiver on a chip, dubbed Rchip, is aimed at resolving these issues by featuring a die stack implementation of an optical receiver. The patented Rchip innovation integrates all the required circuitry and passive components into a single assembly, which provides dramatic performance and manufacturing benefits for data communications optical module applications.

"The 10Gb/s data communications market is rapidly evolving toward lower cost and higher volume solutions and, with offerings such as our Rchip-based ROSA products, Gennum is enabling the industry to move into the next phase of high volume manufacturing," said Imran Sherazi, Marketing Director, Optical Products, Gennum. "Indeed, Gennum has delivered more than 1.5 million high-performance 10Gb/s TIAs to our data communications customers. This experience has enabled us to understand the need for a more integrated plug and play approach. By leveraging our expertise to develop a fully integrated Rchip component, we are now providing a complete solution that delivers the best performance in the industry."

The new line of shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) ROSAs represent Gennum’s first complete ROSA solutions and will address SONET, 10GbE and 10GbE long reach multimode (LRM) applications in a variety of module form factors. The new ROSA products are fully compliant with SONET OC192 and the IEEE® 10GbE Stress Receiver Sensitivity (SRS) specifications for 10GbE SR, LR, ER and LRM, making them ideal for use in compact and low-cost optical transceivers, such as X2, XFP and the emerging SFP+ form factor.

ROSA Products Enabling 10Gb/s Market
The fiber optic communications industry has been experiencing significant change as 10GbE data communication networks have merged with telecom 10Gb/s SONET networks in the drive to reach metro access applications. Added to that are the new cost-driving form factor modules, such as XFP and SFP+, which are driving down the "cost per port". Due to the significant performance headroom offered by Gennum’s new ROSA products, this cost per port is realizable. As a result, ROSA components that can significantly exceed the 10GbE specification will enable the metro, storage and local area network (LAN) markets.

Highly Integrated Rchip Engine Delivers High Gain, Best-in-class ROSA Sensitivity
Leveraging the company’s expertise in 10Gb/s TIA development, the proprietary Gennum RChip is a fully integrated optical receiver comprising a flip-chip photo diode with an advanced TIA that fully incorporates all passive components required. The benefits of silicon-level integration for optical receiver implementation are particularly relevant to today’s cost and performance needs. Leveraging the high volume, low cost benefits of silicon integration, Gennum’s ROSA solutions provide customers with higher manufacturability, higher performance and best-in-class sensitivity products.

Gennum’s complete line of ROSA solutions spans 850 nanometers (nm) to 1550 nm including limiting and linear (automatic gain control) functionality. Each of the new ROSA products feature Gennum’s innovative Rchip packaged in a fully compliant SC or LC barrel optical subassembly.

The first product in Gennum’s new line is the GN3150, which is a SW solution used in multimode fiber applications ranging from 50-300 meters, typically storage-area network (SAN) applications. With an operating wavelength of 850 nm, the new low-power solution delivers a best in class sensitivity of –15dBm with an overload capability of +3.5 dBm and a class-leading gain of 10k-Ohm.

The GN3050 LW ROSA solution is a single mode fiber solution, supporting up to 10 kilometers, which conforms to the SONET OC192 SR-1 specification and the 10GbE LR specification. With an operating wavelength of 1310 nanometers, the new LW ROSA solution achieves an industry-leading stress sensitivity of -21 dBm with an overload of +0.5 dBm and a gain of 10k-Ohm. The advanced Rchip architecture provides the GN3050 with exceptional crosstalk performance to optimize sensitivity in real-world module applications.

The GN3250 LW ROSA product is a single mode fiber solution used in city-to-city applications with a 40 kilometer range. With an operating wavelength of 1550 nm, the LW ROSA solution delivers low optical return loss performance of >27dB, which is critical for longer range applications. Additionally, it achieves an industry-leading stress sensitivity of -21 dBm with an overload of +1.6 dBm and a gain of 10k-Ohm.

Lastly, the GN3052 is a long wave ROSA solution with automatic gain control (AGC) functionality designed specifically for the emerging 10GbE LRM applications. Gennum’s unique AGC architecture provides the industry’s best stressed sensitivity when used with leading electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) solutions achieving –12 dBm sensitivity when measured under stress conditions.

The new ROSA component line further broadens the company’s existing 10Gb/s offerings, including clock and data recovery (CDR) chips, TIAs, laser/modulator drivers and limiting amplifiers, which are used in fiber optic networks and serial backplane applications.

About ROSA Components
ROSA (receive optical sub assembly) components convert incoming light from a fiber optic cable into an electrical signal by means of an integrated photodiode and transimpedance amplifier circuit. The photodiode converts the light into a tiny electrical current which in-turn is converted into a voltage signal by the TIA circuit.

About Gennum
Gennum Corporation (TSX: GND) designs innovative semiconductor solutions and intellectual property (IP) cores for the world’s most advanced consumer connectivity, enterprise, video broadcast and data communications products. Leveraging the company’s proven optical, analog and mixed-signal products and IP, Gennum enables multimedia and data communications products to send and receive information without compromising the signal integrity. An award winner for advances in high definition (HD) broadcasting, Gennum is headquartered in Burlington, Canada, and has global design, research and development and sales offices in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Germany, United States, Taiwan, India and the United Kingdom. www.Gennum.com.

Gennum Media Contact:
Keri Fraser
Gennum Corporation
613-270-0458 x 2909
keri.fraser@gennum.com