Xilinx’s Versal Premium ready for the 800-gigabit era

When Xilinx was created in 1984, the founders banked on programmable logic becoming ever more attractive due to Moore’s law.

Making logic programmable requires extra transistors so Xilinx needed them to become cheaper and more plentiful, something Moore’s law has delivered, like clockwork, over decades.

Kirk SabanSince then, Xilinx’s field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices have advanced considerably.

Indeed, Xilinx’s latest programmable logic family, the Versal Premium, is no longer referred to as an FPGA but as an adaptive compute accelerator platform (ACAP).

The Versal Premium series of chips, to be implemented using TSMC’s 7nm CMOS process, was unveiled for the OFC 2020 show. The Premium series will have seven chips with the largest, the VP1802, having 50 billion transistors.

First devices will ship in the second half of 2021.

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ADVA enables the sharing of spectrum at the optical layer

• Spectrum-as-a-service enables third parties to run networks over existing optical infrastructure.

• ADVA has also simplified linking systems to the metro-access network using self-tuning SFP+ optical modules.

ADVA has developed a scheme whereby communications service providers can sell unused fibre capacity to customers to design and run their own optical networks.

“Optical spectrum-as-a-service gives communications service providers tools to sell spectrum to someone else who now doesn’t need to build a parallel infrastructure,” says Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA’s senior vice president, advanced technology, standards and IPR.

 Jörg-Peter Elbers

ADVA has also developed a G.metro-compliant dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) scheme to simplify linking business parks, radio cell towers and small cells to a metro-access network.

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II-VI shrinks an optical line system into an OSFP module

II-VI has developed an optical line system that fits inside a pluggable module. 

The advent of coherent pluggable modules implementing the 400ZR standard allows switches and routers to be linked across separate data centres. Now, with a pluggable optical line system, a dedicated line-system platform is no longer needed to send the 400ZR signals over a fibre. 

Sanjai ParthasarathiIn turn, the network operating system on the switch manages the optical line system directly such that a separate optical management software layer is no longer needed.

“We have shrunk an entire pizza-box line system into a small pluggable,” says Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer at II-VI.

Indeed, one customer refers to the II-VI pluggable product - dubbed the OSFP-LS - as a ‘zero-rack-unit’ platform.

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Ethernet Alliance on 800G and the next Ethernet rate

It may have taken the industry five years to get 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) modules shipping, but for Mark Nowell, Advisory Board Chair at the Ethernet Alliance, the long gestation period is understandable given the innovation that has been required.

Mark Nowell

The industry has had to cram complex technology into a small form factor for 400GbE while meeting the requirements of two very different end-customers: webscale players and communications service providers.

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NeoPhotonics talks 400ZR, 600G, 800G and Lidar

Many companies that prepared for the OFC show in March had their plans thwarted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

OFC did take place in San Diego despite all the hardships. But company withdrawals meant technology demonstrations were scrapped, press releases went unissued and stories left untold.

Ferris Lipscomb

Intel and Ranovus, for example, planned to fanfare their first co-packaged optics designs at OFC. Demonstrations to interested parties did occur but at their offices instead.

Equally, 800-gigabit coherent technologies from Ciena and Infinera would have been showcased at the show, as would industry organisations' interoperability demonstrations. 

NeoPhotonics announced in January that it was sampling 400-gigabit coherent pluggable offerings in the CFP2 and OSFP form factors.

At OFC it was to show a QSFP-DD module implementing the 400ZR OIF coherent standard, thereby completing its 400-gigabit coherent portfolio. 

“A lot of the planned demos involved inter-operation in customer switches with other modules,” says Ferris Lipscomb, vice president of marketing at NeoPhotonics. “Many of these demos are now being done in San Jose [its HQ in California] for customers coming individually.”

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Ranovus outlines its co-packaged optics plans

Part 2: Odin technology

Ranovus has tested a chiplet that combines electronics and silicon photonics. Dubbed Odin 8, the monolithic design is targetting the co-packaged optics opportunity, enabling silicon chips to communicate optically.

The company is developing two such chiplets: the 800-gigabit Odin 8 and the higher-capacity Odin 32 that supports 3.2 terabits of traffic. 

Hamid Arabzadeh 

The first use of Odin 8 will be for 800-gigabit client-side modules. “We already have three lead customers for our 800-gigabit module business,” says Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus.

The 800-gigabit pluggable modules using the Odin 8 are expected to be generally available from late 2021.

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Infinera’s ICE6 sends 800 gigabits over a 950km link

Infinera has demonstrated the coherent transmission of an 800-gigabit signal across a 950km span of an operational network.

Robert ShoreInfinera used its Infinite Capacity Engine 6 (ICE6), comprising an indium-phosphide photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and its FlexCoherent 6 coherent digital signal processor (DSP). 

The ICE6 supports 1.6 terabits of traffic: two channels, each supporting up to 800-gigabit of data. 

The trial, conducted over an unnamed operator’s network in North America, sent the 800-gigabit signal as an alien wavelength over a third-party line-system carrying live traffic.

“We have proved not only the state of our 800-gigabit with ICE6 but also the distances it can achieve,” says Robert Shore, senior vice president of marketing at Infinera.

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