Optical engines bring Terabit bandwidth on a card

Avago Technologies is now delivering to customers its 120 Gigabit-per-second optical engine devices. 

Such a parallel optics design offer several advantages when used on a motherboard. It offer greater flexibility when cooling since traditional optics are normally in pluggable slots at the card edge, furthest away from the fans. Such optical engines also simplify high-speed signal routing and electromagnetic interference issues since fibre is used rather than copper traces.

Figure 1: Fourteen 120Gbps MiniPods on a board. Source: Avago Technologies

Click to read more ...

OFC announcements and market trends

Avago Technologies, Finisar and Opnext spoke to Gazettabyte about market trends and their recent OFC/NFOEC announcements. 

More compact transceiver designs at 10, 40 and 100 Gigabit, advancements in reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology and parallel optical engine developments were all in evidence at this year’s OFC/NFOEC show held in Los Angeles in March.

“MSAs are designed by committee, and when you have a committee you throw away innovation and you throw away time-to-market”  

Victor Krutul, Avago Technologies

Click to read more ...

Infinera details Terabit PICs, 5x100G devices set for 2012

What has been announced?

Infinera has detailed Terabit coherent detection photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The pair - a transmitter and a receiver PIC – implement a ten-channel 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) link using polarisation multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK). The Infinera development work was describe in papers given at the OFC/NFOEC event held in Los Angeles.

Infinera recently demonstrated its 5x100Gbps PIC carrying traffic within Interoute Communications’ network. The 5x100Gbps PIC-based system will be available commercially in 2012.

 

“We think we can drive the system from where it is today – 8 Terabits-per-fibre - to around 25 Terabits-per-fibre”

Dave Welch, Infinera 

Click to read more ...

Operators want to cut power by a fifth by 2020

Briefing: Green ICT

Part 2: Operators’ power efficiency strategies

Service providers have set themselves ambitious targets to reduce their energy consumption by a fifth by 2020. This despite the expected traffic they will carry being thirty times today’s volumes. Given the cost of electricity and operators’ requirements, such targets are not surprising: KPN, with its 12,000 sites in The Netherlands, consumes 1% of the country’s electricity.

 

“We also have to invest in capital expenditure for a big swap of equipment – in mobile and DSLAMs"

Philippe Tuzzolino, France Telecom-Orange

Click to read more ...

ICT could reduce global carbon emissions by 15%

Briefing: Green ICT

Part 1: Standards and best practices

Keith Dickerson is chair of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) working party on information and communications technology (ICT) and climate change.

In a Q&A with Gazettabyte, he discusses how ICT can help reduce emissions in other industries, where the power hot spots are in the network and what the ITU is doing.

"If you benchmark base stations across different countries and different operators, there is a 5:1 difference in their energy consumption"

Keith Dickerson

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

CyOptics gets $50m worth of new investors and funding

Optical component firm CyOptics has received a US $50million investment. Gazettabyte discussed the company’s activities and plans with CEO, Ed Coringrato, and Stefan Rochus, the company’s vice president of marketing and business development. 

“Volume production scale is very important to having a successful business”

Ed Coringrato, CyOptics

Click to read more ...