The highly integrated CS8020 chip supports four GEPON (EPON) ports in a single chip. It is designed from the ground up to meet the most demanding requirements for Internet ultra broadband access applications. Equipped with four Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports, it offers complete non-blocking switching and wire-speed forwarding. It also incorporates two management ports for redundant control and management. The high density design significantly simplifies board design and lowers the system Bill of Materials (BOM) cost, while enabling system equipment vendors to develop a scalable chassis system or stackable rack mount system.

CS8020 provides a high degree of flexibility and programmability for packet forwarding and traffic engineering. It provides individual queuing and isolation at a user-level granularity. A built-in and programmable traffic-engineering engine supports traffic classification, policing, marking, shaping, scheduling, and WRED-based buffer management. Traffic shaping in the downstream direction is based on an innovative patent-pending design and implementation. Additionally, the extensible SDRAM frame buffer provides the best possible alternative to handle bursty traffic. Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) in the upstream direction operates in multiple configurable modes to ensure flexibility, efficiency and fairness.

CS8020 is an IEEE 802.3ah standards-compliant device.