First co-packaged optics switches set for next year

Ranovus says two of its lead customers will deploy co-packaged optics next year.

They will deploy 25.6-terabit Ethernet switch chips but these will be proof-of-concept designs rather than volume deployments.

Hamid ArabzadehThe deployments will be used to assess the software and gain experience with their maintenance including replacing optics if needed.

“I do think 2024 is going to be the volume year,” says Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus, who expects to announce the customers before the year-end.

Click to read more ...

Turning to optical I/O to open up computing pinch points

Getting data in and out of chips used for modern computing has become a key challenge for designers.

Hugo Saleh

A chip may talk to a neighbouring device in the same platform or to a chip across the data centre.

The sheer quantity of data and the reaches involved - tens or hundreds of meters - is why the industry is turning to optical for a chip’s input-output (I/O).

It is this technology transition that excites Ayar Labs.

The US start-up showcased its latest TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet operating at 1 terabit-per-second (Tbps) during the OFC virtual conference and exhibition held in June.

Click to read more ...

Infinera's XR optics pluggable plans

Infinera’s coherent pluggables for XR optics will also address the company’s metro needs.

Coherent pluggables now dominate the metro market where embedded designs account for just a fifth of all ports, says Infinera.

Robert Shore

“As we grow our metro business, we need our own pluggables if we want to be cost-competitive,” says Robert Shore, senior vice president of marketing at Infinera.

Infinera’s family of pluggables implementing the XR optics concept is dubbed ICE-XR.

XR optics splits a coherent optical signal into Nyquist sub-carriers, each carrying a data payload. Twenty-five gigabits will likely be the sub-carrier capacity chosen.

XR optics can be used for point-to-point links where all the sub-carriers go to the same destination. But the sub-carriers can also be steered to different destinations, similar to how breakout cables are used in the data centre.

With XR optics, a module can talk to several lower-speed ones in a point-to-multipoint arrangement. This enables optical feeds to be summed, ideal for traffic aggregation applications such as access and 5G.

Click to read more ...

Nokia adds 400G coherent modules across its platforms

Nokia is now shipping its 400-gigabit coherent multi-haul CFP2-DCO. The module exceeds the optical performance of 400ZR and ZR+ coherent pluggables.

Nokia’s CFP2-DCO product follows its acquisition of silicon photonics specialist, Elenion Technologies, in 2020.

Serge Melle

Nokia has combined Elenion’s coherent optical modulator and receiver with its low-power 64-gigabaud (GBd) PSE-Vc coherent digital signal processor (DSP).

Nokia is also adding coherent pluggables across its platform portfolio.

“Not just optical transport and transponder platforms but also our IP routing portfolio as well,” says Serge Melle, director of product marketing, IP-optical networking at Nokia.

Click to read more ...

II-VI expands its 400G and 800G transceiver portfolio

II-VI has showcased its latest high-speed optics. The need for such client-side modules is being driven by the emergence of next-generation Ethernet switches in the data centre.

The demonstrations, part of the OFC virtual conference and exhibition held last month, featured two 800-gigabit and two 400-gigabit optical transceivers.

“We have seen the mushrooming of a lot of datacom transceiver companies, primarily from China, and some have grown pretty big,” says Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer at II-VI.

Sanjai Parthasarathi

But a key enabler for next-generation modules is the laser. “Very few companies have these leading laser platforms - whether indium phosphide or gallium arsenide, we have all of that,” says Parthasarathi.

During OFC, II-VI also announced the sampling of a 100-gigabit directly modulated laser (DML) and detailed an optical channel monitoring platform.

Click to read more ...

Marvell's first Inphi chips following its acquisition

Marvell unveiled three new devices at the recent OFC virtual conference and show.

One chip is its latest coherent digital signal processor (DSP), dubbed Deneb.

Nigel AlvaresThe other two chips, for use within the data centre, are a PAM-4 (4-level pulse-amplitude modulation) DSP, and a 1.6-terabit Ethernet physical layer device (PHY).

The chips are Marvell’s first announced Inphi products since it acquired the company in April.

Inphi’s acquisition adds $0.7 billion to Marvell’s $3 billion annual revenues while the more than 1,000 staff brings the total number of employees to 6,000.

Marvell spends 30 per cent of its revenues on R&D.

Click to read more ...

Lumentum ships a 400G CFP2-DCO coherent module

Lumentum has started supplying customers with its CFP2-DCO coherent optical module. Operators use the pluggable to add an optical transport capability to equipment.

The company describes the CFP2-DCO as a workhorse; a multi-purpose pluggable for interface requirements ranging from connecting equipment in separate data centres to long-haul optical transmission.

Brandon CollingsThe module works at 100-, 200-, 300- and 400-gigabit line rates.

The pluggable also complies with the OpenROADM multi-source agreement. It thus supports the open Forward Error Correction (oFEC) standard, enabling interoperability with oFEC-compliant coherent modules from other vendors.

“Optical communications is getting more diverse and dynamic with the inclusion of the internet content providers (ICPs) alongside traditional telecom operators,” says Brandon Collings, CTO at Lumentum.

Click to read more ...