BREINIGSVILLE, Pa., March 14 -- Agere Systems, formerly known as the Microelectronics Group of Lucent Technologies, and Agilent Technologies announced a multisource agreement for 10 Gb Ethernet fiber optic transceivers. The agreement supports the proposed IEEE 10 Gb Ethernet interoperability standard, and specifies a uniform form factor, size, connector type and electrical pin-outs.
    Agere and Agilent will independently develop 10 Gb Ethernet transceivers based on the proposed IEEE standard and this multisource agreement. The agreement covers all four transceiver types defined in the proposed standard, including 850 nm serial, 1310 nm serial, 1310 nm WDM and 1550 nm serial. It specifies transceiver modules not to exceed 38 mm wide, 121 mm long and 17.4 mm high. The specified dimensions will allow high port densities on typical line cards. The transceivers will be front-panel-pluggable devices, connecting to a host circuit board in the Z-plane through a board-mounted card-edge connector. The optical interface will be a standard SC duplex fiber optic connector.
    In addition, Tyco Electronics has designed, and will produce, a 70 pin electrical connector that connects the transceiver to the printed circuit board. The electrical input/output is based on the four wire XAUI (10 Gb attachment unit interface) interface. The three companies will make the details of the agreement available to the industry so that other optical transceiver manufacturers can produce compatible products.