With bandwidth-intensive services such as HDTV now in the consumer mainstream, five vendors have formed an industry group to help speed up commercial availability of 100 Gigabit systems. One goal of the Road to 100G Alliance is to establish a framework where hardware and software vendors can test their products to ensure interoperability.

Bay Microsystems, Enigma Semiconductor, Integrated Device Technology, IP Infusion and Lattice Semiconductor decided to found the Road to 100G Alliance after service providers said their collaboration on 40 Gig products helped speed up the commercial rollout of that technology. The founders also don’t want to repeat the history of optical technology developing years ahead of data processing technology, a gap they believe delays time to market.

“That’s no longer acceptable,” said Bill Weisinger, the alliance’s chairman and Bay’s director of marketing and business development. “All of this has to happen in parallel.”

Some analysts agree. At a Tuesday press conference, Weisinger quoted Infonetics as saying the alliance, “is a major move toward invigorating the market.”

The founders believe it’s not too early to make that move, despite acknowledging that work remains on 40 Gig technologies. That outlook is based on feedback from service providers about their need for more bandwidth to accommodate consumer services such as video, as well as the growing availability of 10 Mb/s to 50 Mb/s consumer broadband services in markets such as Asia. “2009/2010 is realistic” for working 100 G subsystems, Weisinger said.

The alliance plans to work with standards bodies such as the ITU rather than creating its own. The group also will facilitate interoperability testing but has no immediate plans to certify interoperability, although Weisinger wouldn’t rule out that possibility in the future.

The alliance didn’t identify any members besides the five founders but said it’s talking with several interested OEMs and service providers.

More information about the alliance is available at www.roadto100G.org.