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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The 50th anniversary of light-speed connections at OFC

The 50th anniversary of two key optical developments will be celebrated at the upcoming OFC show to take place in San Diego starting March 8th. 

Back in 1970 the first low-loss fibre and the first room-temperature semiconductor laser were demonstrated.

Jun Shan Wey“The low-loss fibre had a loss of 16 decibels-per-kilometre,” says Jun Shan Wey of ZTE and the OFC programme co-chair. “Without such optical fibre, there would be no chance of any long-distance communication.” 

The advent of a semiconductor laser operating at room temperature was another development of key importance, she adds.

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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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Creating a long-term view for the semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry is set for considerable change over the next 15 years.

“We are at an inflection point in the history of the [chip] industry,” says Thomas Conte, an IEEE Fellow. “It will be very different and very diverse; there won’t be one semiconductor industry.” 

Conte (pictured) is co-chair of the IEEE Rebooting Computing initiative that is sponsoring the International Roadmap of Devices and Systems (IRDS) programme. The IRDS is defining technology roadmaps over a 15-year horizon and in November will publish its first that spans nine focus areas. (See The emergence of the IRDS, below).

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Reporting the optical component & module industry

LightCounting recently published its six-monthly optical market research covering telecom and datacom. Gazettabyte interviewed Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting, about the findings.

When people forecast they always make a mistake on the timeline because they overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term and underestimate in the long term.

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The CDFP 400 Gig module

• The CDFP will be a 400 Gig short reach module
• Module will enable 4 Terabit line cards 
• Specification will be completed in the next year

A CDFP pluggable multi-source agreement (MSA) has been created to develop a 400 Gigabit module for use in the data centre. "It is a pluggable interface, very similar to the QSFP and CXP [modules]," says Scott Sommers, group product manager at Molex, one of the CDFP MSA members.

Scott Sommers, MolexThe CDFP name stands for 400 (CD in Roman numerals) Form factor Pluggable. The MSA will define the module's mechanical properties and its medium dependent interface (MDI) linking the module to the physical medium. The CDFP will support passive and active copper cable, active optical cable and multi-mode fibre.

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Do multi-source agreements benefit the optical industry?

Transceiver feature: Part 1

System vendors may adore optical transceivers but there is a concern about how multi-source agreements originate. 

Optical transceiver form factors, defined through multi-source agreements (MSAs), benefit equipment vendors by ensuring there are several suppliers to choose from.  No longer must a system vendor develop its own or be locked in with a supplier.

“Personally, the MSA is the worst thing that has happened to the optical industry”

Marek Tlaka, Luxtera

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