Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Next Information Revolution

New book to be published in December 2016

Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Next Information Revolution is the title of the book Daryl Inniss and I have just completed.

We started writing the book at the end of 2014. We felt the timing was right for a silicon photonics synthesis book that assesses the significant changes taking place in the datacom, telecom, and semiconductor industries, and explains the market opportunities that will result and the role silicon photonics will play.

Silicon photonics is coming to market at a time of momentous change. Internet content providers are driving new requirements as they scale their data centres. The chip industry is grappling with the end of Moore’s law. And the telecom community faces its own challenges as the bandwidth-carrying capacity of fiber starts to be approached.

Click to read more ...

Mobile backhaul chips rise to the LTE challenge

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular standard has a demanding set of mobile backhaul requirements. Gazettabyte looks at two different chip designs for LTE mobile backhaul, from PMC-Sierra and from Broadcom.

"Each [LTE Advanced cell] sector will be over 1 Gig and there will be a need to migrate the backhaul to 10 Gig"

Liviu Pinchas, PMC-Sierra

Click to read more ...

Carrier Ethernet switch chip for wireless small cells

• 6-port low power 12 Gigabit Carrier Ethernet switch chip 
• Used for intra and inter-board comms, and back-hauling 
• Supports MPLS and MPLS-TP

 "Multi-carrier OA&M performance monitoring allows you to manage your network for your users through another carrier’s network”

Uday Mudoi, Vitesse Semiconductor

Click to read more ...

MultiPhy targets low-power coherent metro chip for 2013

MultiPhy has given first details of its planned 100 Gigabit coherent chip for metro networks. The Israeli fabless start-up expects to have samples of the device in 2013. 

"We can tolerate greater [signal] impairments which means the requirements on the components we can use are more relaxed"

Avi Shabtai, CEO of MultiPhy

Click to read more ...

Fibre-to-the-FPGA

Briefing: Optical Interconnect

Part 1: FPGAs

Programmable logic chip vendor Altera is developing FPGAs with optical interfaces. But is there a need for such technology and how difficult will it be to develop? 

FPGAs with optical interfaces promise to simplify high-speed interfacing between and within telecom and datacom systems. Such fibre-based FPGAs, once available, could also trigger novel system architectures. But not all FPGA vendors believe optical-enabled FPGAs’ time has come, arguing that cost and reliability hurdles must be overcome for system vendors to embrace the technology 

“One of the advantages of using optics is that you haven’t got to throw your backplanes away as [interface] speeds increase.”

Craig Davis, Altera

Click to read more ...

Webinar: MultiPhy on the 100G Direct Detect market

Gazettabyte has hosted a webinar with Israeli semiconductor firm MultiPhy. Entitled The Emerging 100 Gigabit Metro & Datacenter Connectivity Opportunity, the webinar includes:

• An Ovum market forecast for 100 Gigabit Direct Detect to 2015
• The changes in the network creating demand for 100 Gigabit Direct Detect optical transport
• Emerging operator and vendor backing for the technology
• MultiPhy’s IC technology and its 100 Gigabit Direct Detect solution
• The performance metrics of 100 Gigabit Direct Detect

"An internet giant is now firmly committed to an 80km pluggable solution. And if it is 80km and pluggable we know it is not coherent"

Neal Neslusan, MultiPhy

Presenting the webinar for MultiPhy is Neal Neslusan, vice president of sales and marketing. 

To view, please register by clicking here. You will then receive an email with a link to the 100 Gigabit webinar.

Further reading: 

MultiPhy eyes 40 and 100 Gigabit direct detect and coherent

Xilinx's 400 Gigabit Ethernet FPGA

Xilinx has detailed its latest 28nm CMOS Virtex-7 FPGA family that will support 400 Gigabit Ethernet on a single device. The Virtex-7HT completes the Virtex-7, joining the Virtex-7T and Virtex-7XT product families announced in June.

A single FPGA will support 400 Gigabit Ethernet duplex traffic. The FPGA can also support 4x100Gig MACs and 4x150Gbps Interlaken interfaces. Source: Xilinx

Why is it important?

Xilinx says its switch and router customers are more than doubling the traffic capacity of their platforms every three years. “They are looking for silicon that will support a doubling of capacity within the same form-factor and the same power budget,” says Giles Peckham, EMEA marketing director at Xilinx.  

Click to read more ...