China Mobile plots 400 Gigabit trials in 2017

China Mobile is preparing to trial 400-gigabit transmission in the backbone of its optical network in 2017. The planned trials were detailed during a keynote talk given by Jiajin Gao, deputy general manager at China Mobile Technology, at the OIDA Executive Forum, an OSA event hosted at OFC, held in Los Angeles last week.

The world's largest operator will trial two 400-gigabit variants: polarisation-multiplexed, quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM).    

Click to read more ...

Reflections on OFC 2017

Mood, technologies, notable announcements - just what are the metrics to judge the OFC 2017 show held in Los Angeles last week?

It was the first show I had attended in several years and the most obvious changes were how natural the presence of the internet content providers now is alongside the telecom operators, as well as systems vendors exhibiting at the show. Chip companies, while also present, were fewer than before.

Source: OSA

Another impression were the latest buzz terms: 5G, the Internet of Things and virtual reality-augmented reality. Certain of these technologies are more concrete than others, but their repeated mention suggests a consensus that the topics are real enough to impact optical components and networking.

Click to read more ...

IoT will drive chip design and new styles of computing

Looking back 20 years hence, how will this period be viewed? The question was posed by the CEO of imec, Luc Van de hove, during his opening talk at a day event imec organised in Tel-Aviv.

For Van den hove, this period will be seen as one of turbulent technological change. “The world is changing at an incredible rate,” he says. “The era of digital disruption is changing our industry and this disruption is not going to stop.”

Luc Van den hove

It was the Belgium nonoelectronics R&D centre’s second visit to Israel to promote its chip and systems expertise as it seeks to expand its links with Israel’s high-tech industry. And what most excites imec is the Internet of Things (IoT), the advent of connected smart devices that turn data into information and adapt the environment to our needs.

Click to read more ...

Stitching together disaggregated chips

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has begun work on a 112-gigabit electrical interface to connect chips in a multi-chip module.

The ultra-short-reach electrical interface for multi-chip modules adds to the OIF's ongoing CEI-112G project, started in August 2016, to develop a 112 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) serial electrical interface for next-generation optical modules. 

Source: Gazettabyte, OIF data. The year 2018 is an estimate.

Click to read more ...