Oclaro uses Acacia’s Meru DSP for its CFP2-DCO

Oclaro will use Acacia Communications’ coherent DSP for its pluggable CFP2 Digital Coherent Optics (CFP2-DCO) module. The module will be compatible with Acacia’s own CFP2-DCO, effectively offering customers a second source. 

Tom Williams This is the first time Acacia is making its coherent DSP technology available to a fellow module maker, says Tom Williams, Acacia’s senior director, marketing.

Acacia benefits from the deal by expanding the market for its technology, while Oclaro gains access to a leading low-power coherent DSP, the Meru, and can bring to market its own CFP2-DCO product. 

Williams says the move was encouraged by customers and that having a second source and achieving interoperability will drive CFP2-DCO market adoption. That said, Acacia is not looking for further module partners. “With two strong suppliers, we don’t see a need to add additional ones,” says Williams.  

“This agreement is a sign that the market is reaching maturity, with suppliers transitioning from grabbing market share at all costs to more rational strategies,” says Vladimir Kozlov, CEO and founder of LightCounting Market Research.

Click to read more ...

Elenion's coherent and fibre-to-the-server plans

• Elenion’s coherent chip - an integrated modulator-receiver assembly - is now generally available. 
• The company has a silicon photonics design library that includes over 1,000 elements. 
• Elenion is also developing an optical engine for client-side interfaces.

Elenion Technologies has given an update on its activities and strategy after announcing itself eight months ago. The silicon photonics-based specialist is backed by private equity firm, Marlin Equity Partners, which also owns systems vendor, Coriant. Elenion had already been active for two and a half years and shipping product when it emerged from its state of secrecy last December. 

Larry SchwerinElenion has since announced it is selling its telecom product, a coherent transceiver PIC, to Coriant and now other companies.

It has also progressed its optical engine design for the data centre that will soon be a product. Elenion has been working with Ethernet switch chip maker, Cavium, and data centre player, Microsoft, as part of its datacom work.

“We have moved forward,” says Larry Schwerin, the CEO of Elenion.

Click to read more ...

Coherent optics players target the network edge for growth

Part 1: Coherent developments

The market for optical links for reaches between 10km and 120km is emerging as a fierce battleground between proponents of coherent and direct-detection technologies. 

Interest in higher data rates such as 400 gigabits is pushing coherent-based optical transmission from its traditional long-distance berth to shorter-reach applications. “That tends to be where the growth for coherent has come from as it has migrated from long-haul to metro,” says Tom Williams, senior director of marketing at Acacia Communications, a coherent technology supplier. 

Source: Acacia Communications, Gazettabyte

Williams points to the Optical Internetworking Forum’s (OIF) ongoing work to develop a 400-gigabit link for data centre interconnect. Dubbed 400ZR, the project is specifying an interoperable coherent interface that will support dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) links for distances of at least 80km.

Click to read more ...

Infinera unveils its next-gen packet-optical platforms

Infinera has announced its first major metro product upgrade since it acquired Transmode in 2015.

The XTM II platforms use CFP2-DCO pluggable modules for the line-side optics, not Infinera’s photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology.

Infinera’s XTM II achieves new levels of power efficiency by adopting CFP2-DCO pluggables and a distributed switch architecture.

Source: Infinera

Infinera has unveiled its latest metro products that support up to 200-gigabit wavelengths using CFP2-DCO pluggable modules.

The XTM II platform family is designed to support growing metro traffic, low-latency services and the trend to move sophisticated equipment towards the network edge. Placing computing, storage and even switching near the network edge contrasts with the classical approach of backhauling traffic, sometimes deep within the network.

Click to read more ...

Acacia looks to co-package its coherent PIC and DSP-ASIC

• Acacia Communications is working to co-package its coherent DSP and its silicon photonics transceiver chip. 

• The company is also developing a digital coherent optics module that will support 400 gigabit. 

Acacia Communications is working to co-package its coherent DSP and its silicon photonics transceiver chip. The line-side optical transceiver company is working on a digital coherent optics module that will support 400 gigabits.

Acacia announced last November that it was sampling the industry’s first CFP2 Digital Coherent Optics (CFP2-DCO) that supports 100- and 200-gigabit line rates. The CFP2-DCO integrates the DSP and its silicon photonics chip within a CFP2 module, which is half the size of a CFP module, with each chip packaged separately.

Click to read more ...

NeoPhotonics samples its first CFP-DCO products

NeoPhotonics has entered the fray as a supplier of long-distance CFP pluggable modules that integrate the coherent DSP-ASIC chip with the optics. 

The company has announced two such CFP Digital Coherent Optics (CFP-DCO) modules: a 100 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) module and a dual-rate 100Gbps and 200Gbps one.

“Our rationale [for entering the CFP-DCO market] is we have all the optical components and the [merchant coherent] DSPs are now becoming available,” says Ferris Lipscomb (pictured), vice president of marketing at NeoPhotonics. “It is possible to make this product without developing your own custom DSP, with all the expense that entails.”

Click to read more ...

600-gigabit channels on a fibre by 2017

NeoPhotonics has announced an integrated coherent receiver that will enable 600-gigabit optical transmission using a single wavelength. A transmission capacity of 48 terabits over the fibre’s C-band is then possible using 80 such channels.

NeoPhotonics’ micro integrated coherent receiver operates at 64 gigabaud, twice the symbol rate of deployed 100-gigabit optical transport systems and was detailed at the recent ECOC show.

Current 100 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) coherent systems use polarisation-multiplexing, quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) modulation operating at 32 gigabaud. “That is how you get four bits [per symbol],” says Ferris Lipscomb, vice president of marketing at NeoPhotonics.

Optical designers have two approaches to increase the data transmitted on a wavelength: they can use increasingly complex modulation schemes - such as 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) or 64-QAM - and they can increase the baud rate. “You double the baud rate, you double the transmission capacity,” says Lipscomb. “And using 64-QAM and 64 gigabaud, you can go to 600 gigabit per channel; of course when you do that, you reduce the reach.”

The move to the higher 64 gigabaud symbol rate will help Internet content providers increase capacity between their large-scale data centres. Typical transmission distances between sites are relatively short, up to 100km.

Click to read more ...