Acacia announces a 1.2 terabit coherent module

Acacia Communications has given first details of its AC1200 coherent optical module, capable of transmitting up to 1.2 terabits of data. The custom coherent transceiver is being aimed at applications ranging from linking data centres to long-haul and even sub-sea transmissions and was announced at the recent ECOC show held in Gothenburg.

Channel capacity and link margin can be maximised by using the fractional QAM scheme. Source: Acacia.

The company is facing increasing market competition. Ciena has teamed up with Lumentum, NeoPhotonics, and Oclaro, sharing its high-end coherent DSP expertise with the three optical module makers. Meanwhile, Inphi has started sampling its 16nm CMOS M200, a 100- and 200-gigabit coherent DSP suitable for CFP2-ACO, CFP-DCO, and CFP2-DCO module designs.

The AC1200 is Acacia’s response, extending its high-end module offering beyond a terabit to compete with the in-house system vendors and preserve its performance lead against the optical module makers.

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Oclaro’s 400-gigabit plans

Adam Carter, Oclaro’s chief commercial officer, discusses the company’s 400-gigabit and higher-speed coherent optical transmission plans and the 400-gigabit client-side pluggable opportunity.    

Oclaro showcased its first coherent module that uses Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai digital signal processor at the ECOC show held recently in Gothenburg.

Adam CarterOclaro is one of three optical module makers, the others being Lumentum and NeoPhotonics, that signed an agreement with Ciena earlier this year to use the system vendor’s DSP technology and know-how to bring coherent modules to market. The first product resulting from the collaboration is a 5x7-inch board-mounted module that supports 400-gigabits on a single-wavelength.   

The first WaveLogic Ai-based modules are already being tested at several of Oclaro’s customers’ labs. “They [the module samples] are very preliminary,” says Adam Carter, the chief commercial officer at Oclaro. “The really important timeframe is when we get towards the new year because then we will have beta samples.”

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The CWDM8 MSA avoids PAM-4 to fast-track 400G

Another multi-source agreement (MSA) group has been created to speed up the market introduction of 400-gigabit client-side optical interfaces.

The CWDM8 MSA is described by its founding members as a pragmatic approach to provide 400-gigabit modules in time for the emergence of next-generation switches next year. The CWDM8 MSA was announced at the ECOC show held in Gothenburg last week.

Robert BlumThe eight-wavelength coarse wavelength-division multiplexing (CWDM) MSA is being promoted as a low-cost alternative to the IEEE 803.3bs 400 Gigabit Ethernet Task Force’s 400-gigabit eight-wavelength specifications, and less risky than the newly launched 100G Lambda MSA specifications based on four 100-gigabit wavelengths for 400 gigabit.

“The 100G Lambda has merits and we are also part of that MSA,” says Robert Blum, director of strategic marketing and business development at Intel’s silicon photonics product division. “We just feel the time to get to 100-gigabit-per-lambda is really when you get to 800 Gigabit Ethernet.”

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MultiPhy unveils 100G single-wavelength PAM-4 chip

A chip to enable 100-gigabit single-wavelength client-side optical modules has been unveiled by MultiPhy. The 100-gigabit 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) circuit will also be a key building block for 400 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces that use four wavelengths.

Source: MultiPhy

Dubbed the MPF3101, the 100-gigabit physical layer (PHY) chip is aimed at such applications as connecting switches within data centres and for 5G cloud radio access network (CRAN).

“The chip has already been sent out to customers and we are heading towards market introductions,” says Avi Shabtai, CEO of MultiPhy.

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New MSA to enable four-lambda 400-gigabit modules

A new 100-gigabit single-wavelength multi-source agreement (MSA) has been created to provide the industry with 2km and 10km 100-gigabit and 400-gigabit four-wavelength interfaces.

Mark NowellThe MSA is backed by 22 founding companies including Microsoft, Alibaba and Cisco Systems.

The initiative started work two months ago and a draft specification is expected before the year end.

“Twenty-two companies is a very large MSA at this stage, which shows the strong interest in this technology,” says Mark Nowell, distinguished engineer, data centre switching at Cisco Systems and co-chair of the 100G Lambda MSA. “It is clear this is going to be the workhorse technology for the industry for quite a while.”

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COBO targets year-end to complete specification

Part 3: 400-gigabit on-board optics

• COBO will support 400-gigabit and 800-gigabit interfaces 
• Three classes of module have been defined, the largest supporting at least 17.5W 

The Consortium for On-board Optics (COBO) is scheduled to complete its module specification this year.

A draft specification defining the mechanical aspects of the embedded optics - the dimensions, connector and electrical interface - is already being reviewed by the consortium’s members.

Brad Booth“The draft specification encompasses what we will do inside the data centre and what will work for the coherent market,” says Brad Booth, chair of COBO and principal network architect for Microsoft’s Azure Infrastructure.

COBO was established in 2015 to create an embedded optics multi-source agreement (MSA). On-board optics have long been available but until now these have been proprietary solutions. 

“Our goal [with COBO] was to get past that proprietary aspect,” says Booth. “That is its true value - it can be used for optical backplane or for optical interconnect and now designers will have a standard to build to.” 

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SFP-DD: Turning the SFP into a 100-gigabit module

Part 2: New optical transceiver MSA

An industry initiative has started to quadruple the data rate of the SFP, the smallest of the pluggable optical modules. The Small Form Factor Pluggable – Double Density (SFP-DD) is being designed to support 100 gigabits by doubling the SFP’s electrical lanes from one to two and doubling their speed.

Scott SommersThe new multi-source agreement (MSA), to be completed during 2018, will be rated at 3.5W; the same power envelope as the current 100-gigabit QSFP module, even though the SFP-DD is expected to be 2.5x smaller in size.

The front panel of a 1-rack-unit box will be able to support up to 96 SFP-DD modules, a total capacity of 9.6 terabits. 

The SFP-DD is adopting a similar philosophy as that being used for the 400-gigabit QSFP-DD MSA: an SFP-DD port will support legacy SFPs modules - the 25-gigabit SFP28 and 10-gigabit SFP - just as the QSFP-DD will be backward compatible with existing QSFP modules.

“Time and time again we have heard with the QSFP-DD that plugging in legacy modules is a key benefit of that technology,” says Scott Sommers, group product manager at Molex and the chair of the new SFP-DD MSA. Sommers is also a co-chair of the QSFP-DD MSA.

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