Microchip expands the choice of 1.6-terabit Ethernet PHYs

Microchip Technology has enlarged its portfolio of 1.6-terabit physical layer (PHY) Ethernet chips targeting next-generation switch and router line cards.

Stephen Docking

In 2021, Microchip announced its PM6200 Meta-DX2L (‘L’ standing for light), its first 1.6-terabit Meta-DX2 PHY that uses 112-gigabit PAM-4 (4-level pulse-amplitude modulation) serialiser/ deserialisers (series).

Microchip has now added four more 1.6-terabit Ethernet PHYs dubbed Meta-DX2+.

Like the Meta-DX2L, the PHYs are implemented using a 6nm CMOS process while the ‘plus’ signifies added features.

The Meta-DX2L is used for such tasks as retiming, for a signal sent across the system’s backplane, for example, and has a ‘gearbox’ feature that translates between 28, 56 and 112-gigabit data rates.

With the Meta-DX2+ PHYs, Microchip has added port aggregation and security hardware.

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DustPhotonics readies its first optical engine

• DustPhotonics has a silicon photonics modulator capable of 200 gigabits per lane
• The start-up also has developed a precision laser-attach scheme

 DustPhotonics’s office view

Ronnen Lovinger waves as he approaches the local train station. DustPhotonics’ CEO is taking me to the company’s offices on the outskirts of Modi’in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The site has a striking view of a landscape also halfway between Israel’s flat coastal plain and the steep hills of Jerusalem.

Lovinger has been CEO of DustPhotonics since 2021. Before that, he was chief operating officer (COO) at Innoviz Technologies, joining the lidar firm after 18 years at Mellanox, now part of Nvidia.

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Drut's agile optical fabric for the data centre

A US start-up has developed a photonic fabric for the data centre that pulls together the hardware needed for a computational task.

Drut Technologies offers management software and a custom line card, which, when coupled with the optical switch, grabs the hardware required for the workload.

Some of the Drut team (L to R): Sumit Jayaswal, member of technical staff; Bill Koss, CEO; and Jitender Miglani, founder and president.

“You can have a server with lots of resource machines: lots of graphic processing units (GPUs) and lots of memory,” says Bill Koss, CEO of Drut. “You create a machine, attach a workload to it and run it; forever, for a day, or 15 minutes.”

Drut first showcased its technology supporting the PCI Express (PCIe) bus over photonics at server specialist, SuperMicro’s exhibition stand, at the Supercomputing 22 show held last November in Dallas, Texas.

“This is a fully reconfigurable, direct-connect optical fabric for the data centre,” says Koss.

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Deutsche Telekom explains its IP-over-DWDM thinking

Telecom operators are always seeking better ways to run their networks. In particular, operators regularly scrutinise how best to couple the IP layer with their optical networking infrastructure.

The advent of 400-gigabit coherent modules that plug directly into an IP router is one development that has caught their eye.

Placing dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) interfaces directly onto an IP router allows the removal of a separate transponder box and its interfacing.

IP-over-DWDM is not a new concept. However, until now, operators have had to add a coherent line card, taking up valuable router chassis space.

Werner Weiershausen

Now, with the advent of compact 400-gigabit coherent pluggables developed for the hyperscalers to link their data centres, telecom operators have realised that such pluggables also serve their needs.

BT will start rolling out IP-over-DWDM in its network this year, while Deutsche Telekom has analysed the merits of IP-over-DWDM.

"The adoption of IP-over-DWDM is the subject of our techno-economical studies," says Werner Weiershausen, senior architect for the transport network at Deutsche Telekom.

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Lumentum’s CTO discusses photonic trends

CTO interviews part 2: Brandon Collings

• The importance of moving to parallel channels will only increase given the continual growth in bandwidth.
• Lumentum's integration of NeoPhotonics’ engineers and products has been completed.
• The use of coherent techniques continues to grow, which is why Lumentum acquired the telecom transmission product lines and staff of IPG Photonics.

Brandon Collings has been a CTO for over 13 years; first as CTO of the commercial optical products (CCOP) business within JDSU and then CTO of Lumentum when it spun out in 2015. In that time, the scope of his work has continued to grow.

Brandon Collings

"It has changed quite significantly given what Lumentum is engaging in," he says. "My role spans the entire company; I'm engaged in a lot of areas well beyond communications."

A decade ago, the main focus was telecom and datacom. Now Lumentum also addresses commercial lasers, 3D sensing, and, increasingly, automotive lidar.

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The Metaverse and the network

CTO interviews part 1: Stephen Alexander

"The inability to precisely predict how we'll use it [the Metaverse], and how it will change our daily life, is not a flaw. Rather, it is a prerequisite for the Metaverse's disruptive force."

The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball, 2022.

CTO Interview 

Stephen Alexander's trusty 20-year-old dishwasher finally stopped working during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, getting spare parts shipped to the US was impossible, so Alexander, the CTO of Ciena (pictured), resorted to 'how-to' YouTube videos and got bits from eBay.

It highlighted the power of the online experience, something set to ramp significantly with the advent of the Metaverse.

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Taking a unique angle to platform design

• A novel design based on a vertical line card shortens the trace length between an ASIC and pluggable modules.
• Reducing the trace length improves signal integrity while maintaining the merits of using pluggables.
• Using the vertical line card design will extend for at least two more generations the use of pluggables with Ethernet switches.

The travelling salesperson problem involves working out the shortest route on a round-trip to multiple cities. It's a well-known complex optimisation problem.

Chris Cole

Systems engineers face their own complex optimisation problem just sending an electrical signal between two points, connecting an Ethernet switch chip to a pluggable optical module, for example.

Sending the high-speed signal over the link with sufficient fidelity for its recovery requires considerable electronic engineering design skills. And with each generation of electrical signalling, link distances are getting shorter.

In a paper presented at the recent ECOC show, held in Basel, consultant Chris Cole, working with Yamaichi Electronics, outlined a novel design that shortens the distance between an Ethernet switch chip and the front-panel optics.

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