This makes it able to fabricate Asics which will meet the emerging 50Gbit/s industry standards such as OIF CEI-56G-LR and IEEE 802.3cd.

The SerDes core, designated FX-14, supports both PAM4 and NRZ signaling, with the capability to equalise over 35dB of insertion loss.

“The explosive growth in network bandwidth continues to drive the need for Asic solutions with industry-leading interface speed and density,” said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group.

Globalfoundries said that customers are already designing Asics in 14LPP process technology using the 56Gbit/s and other FX-14 SerDes cores.

It said it is currently demonstrating its 56Gbit/s SerDes in customer channels and will begin shipping development boards in early Q1 2017.

On the roadmap are optical variants, enabling a broad array of technology to achieve 112Git/s and beyond.