OIF moves to raise coherent transmission baud rate
Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 5:22AM "We want the two projects to look at those trade-offs and look at how we could build the particular components that could support higher individual channel rates,” says Karl Gass of Qorvo and the OIF physical and link layer working group vice chair, optical.
Karl Gass
The OIF members, which include operators, internet content providers, equipment makers, and optical component and chip players, want components that work over a wide bandwidth, says Gass. This will allow the modulator and receiver to be optimised for the new higher baud rate.
OIF shows 56G electrical interfaces & CFP2-ACO
Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 12:39PM The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is using the OFC exhibition taking place in Los Angeles this week to showcase the first electrical interfaces running at 56 Gigabit. Coherent optics in a CFP2 pluggable module is also being demonstrated.
“The most important thing for everyone is power consumption on the line card”
The OIF - an industry organisation comprising communications service providers, internet content providers, system vendors and component companies - is developing the next common electrical interface (CEI) specifications, as well as continuing to advance fixed and pluggable optical module specifications for coherent transmission including the pluggable CFP2.
“These are major milestones that the [demonstration] efforts are even taking place,” says Nathan Tracy, technologist at TE Connectivity and the OIF technical committee chair.
OIF demonstrates its 25 Gig interfaces are ready for use
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 at 1:52PM Eleven companies have been participating in nine demonstrations at the European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC2013) being held in London this week.
The Open Internetworking Forum (OIF) has demonstrated its specified 25 and 28 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) electrical interfaces working across various vendors' 100 Gigabit modules and ICs.
"The infrastructure over the backplane is maturing to the point of 25 Gig; you don't need special optical backplanes" John Monson, Mosys
"The ecosystem is maturing," says John Monson, vice president of marketing at Mosys, one of the 11 firms participating in the demonstrations. "The demos are not just showing the electrical OIF interfaces but their functioning between multiple vendors, with optical standards running across them at 100 Gig."
The demonstrations - using the CFP2, QSFP and CPAK optical modules and the 28Gbps CEI-28G-VSR module-to-chip electrical interface - set the stage for higher density 400 and 800 Gigabit line cards, says Monson. The CEI-28G-VSR is specified for up to 10dB of signal loss, equating to some 4 to 6 inches of trace on a high-quality material printed circuit board.
400 Gigabit Ethernet, CDFP, CEI-25G-LR, CEI-28G-VSR, CFP2, CPAK, IEEE P802.3bj, Mosys, OIF, QSFP in ECOC 2013 Print Article Luxtera's interconnect strategy
Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 9:20AM Briefing: Silicon photonics
Part 1: Optical interconnect
Luxtera demonstrated a 100 Gigabit QSFP optical module at the OFC/NFOEC 2013 exhibition.
"We're in discussions with a lot of memory vendors, switch vendors and different ASIC providers"
Chris Bergey, Luxtera
The role of software-defined networking for telcos
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 at 10:43AM The OIF's Carrier Working Group is assessing how software-defined networking (SDN) will impact transport. Hans-Martin Foisel, chair of the OIF working group, explains SDN's importance for operators.
Briefing: Software-defined networking
Part 1: Operator interest in SDN
"Using SDN use cases, we are trying to derive whether the transport network is ready or if there is some missing functionality"
Hans-Martin Foisel, OIF
OIF promotes uni-fabric switches & 100G transmitter
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 9:34AM 
Improving the switching capabilities of telecom platforms without redesigning the switch as well as tinier 100 Gigabit transmitters are just two recent initiatives of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF).
Do multi-source agreements benefit the optical industry?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 10:46AM 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
