Altera unveils its optical FPGA prototype

Altera has been showcasing a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip with optical interfaces. The 'optical FPGA' prototype makes use of parallel optical interfaces from Avago Technologies.

Combining the FPGA with optics extends the reach of the chip's transceivers to up to 100m. Such a device, once commercially available, will be used to connect high-speed electronics on a line card without requiring exotic printed circuit board (PCB) materials. An optical FPGA will also be used to link equipment such as Ethernet switches in the data centre.

"It is solving a problem the industry is going to face," says Craig Davis, product marketing manager at Altera. "As you go to faster bit-rate transceivers, the losses on the PCB become huge."

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Intelligent networking: Q&A with Alcatel-Lucent's CTO

Alcatel-Lucent's corporate CTO, Marcus Weldon, in a Q&A with Gazettabyte. Here, in Part 1, he talks about the future of the network, why developing in-house ASICs is important and why Bell Labs is researching quantum computing.

Marcus Weldon (left) with Jonathan Segel, executive director in the corporate CTO Group, holding the lightRadio cube. Photo: Denise Panyik-Dale

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