Dan Sadot on coherent's role in the metro and the data centre

Gazettabyte went to visit Professor Dan Sadot, academic, entrepreneur and founder of chip start-up MultiPhy, to discuss his involvement in start-ups, his research interests and why he believes coherent technology will not only play an important role in the metro but also the data centre.

"Moore's Law is probably the most dangerous enemy of optics"

Professor Dan Sadot 

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Oclaro-Opnext merger will create second largest optical component company

Oclaro has announced its plan to merge with Opnext. The deal, valued at US $177M, will result in Opnext's shareholders owning 42% of the combined company. The merger of the fifth and sixth largest optical component players will create a company with annual revenues of $800M, second only to Finisar. The deal is expected to be completed in the next 3-6 months.

Source: Gazettabyte

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100 Gigabit direct detection gains wider backing

More vendors are coming to market with 100 Gigabit direct detection products for metro and private networks. 

The emergence of a second de-facto 100 Gigabit standard, a complement to 100 Gigabit coherent, gained credence with 4x28 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) direct detect announcements from Finisar and Oclaro and likely backing from system vendor, ECI Telecom.

 

"We believe that in some cases operators will prefer to go with this technology instead of coherent"

Shai Stein, CTO, ECI Telecom 

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Latest coherent ASICs set the bar for the optical industry

Feature: Beyond 100G - Part 3

Alcatel-Lucent has detailed its next-generation coherent ASIC that supports multiple modulation schemes and allow signals to scale to 400 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps). 

The announcement follows Ciena's WaveLogic 3 coherent chipset that also trades capacity and reach by changing the modulation scheme.

"They [Ciena and Alcatel-Lucent] have set the bar for the rest of the industry," says Ron Kline, principal analyst for Ovum’s network infrastructure group.

 "We will employ [the PSE] for all new solutions on 100 Gigabit"

Kevin Drury, Alcatel-Lucent

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Cisco Systems' 100 Gigabit spans metro to ultra long-haul

Cisco Systems has demonstrated 100 Gigabit transmission over a 3,000km span. The coherent-based system uses a single carrier in a 50GHz channel to transmit at 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps). According to Cisco, no Raman amplification or signal regeneration is needed to achieve the 3,000km reach.

Feature: Beyond 100G - Part 2

"The days of a single modulation scheme on a part are probably going to come to an end in the next two to three years"

Greg Nehib, Cisco 

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Challenges, progress & uncertainties facing the optical component industry

In recent years the industry has moved from direct detection to coherent transmission and has alighted on a flexible ROADM architecture. The result is a new level in optical networking sophistication. OFC/NFOEC 2012 will showcase the progress in these and other areas of industry consensus as well as shining a spotlight on issues less clear.

Optical component players may be forgiven for the odd envious glance towards the semiconductor industry and its well-defined industry dynamics. 

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Reflections 2011, Predictions 2012 - Part 2

Gazettabyte asked industry analysts, CEOs, executives and commentators to reflect on the last year and comment on developments they most anticipate for 2012. Here are the views of Verizon's Glenn Wellbrock, Professor Rod Tucker, Ciena's Joe Berthold, Opnext's Jon Anderson, NeoPhotonics' Tim Jenks and Vladimir Kozlov of LightCounting.

Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon's director of optical transport network architecture & design

The most significant accomplishment from an optical transport perspective for me was the introduction of 100 Gigabit into Verizon's domestic - US - network. 

"The key technology enabler in 2012 will be the flexible grid optical switching that can support data rates beyond 100 Gigabit"

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