OneChip Photonics targets the data centre with its PICs

OneChip Photonics is developing integrated optical components for the IEEE 40GBASE-LR4 and 100GBASE-LR4 interface standards.

The company believes its photonic integrated circuits (PICs) will more than halve the cost of the 40 and 100 Gigabit 10km-reach interfaces, enough for LR4 to cost-competitively address shorter reach applications in the data centre.

"I think we can cut the price [of LR4 modules] by half or better”

Andy Weirich, OneChip Photonics

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NeoPhotonics secures PIC specialist Santur

Gazettabyte spoke with Tim Jenks, CEO of NeoPhotonics about the Santur acquisition, the 10x10 MSA, vertical integration and why optical components is a technology industry trend-setter

NeoPhotonics has completed the acquisition of Santur, the tunable laser and photonic integration specialist, boosting the company's annual turnover to a quarter of a billion dollars.

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High fives: 5 Terabit OTN switching and 500 Gig super-channels.

Infinera has announced a core network platform that combines Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching with dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transport. "We are looking at a system that integrates two layers of the network," says Mike Capuano, vice president of corporate marketing at Infinera. 

"This is 100Tbps of non-blocking switching, all functioning as one system. You just can't do that with merchant silicon."

Mike Capuano, Infinera 

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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 

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Q&A with Rafik Ward - Part 1

In the first of a two-part interview, Rafik Ward, vice president of marketing at Finisar, talks about 40 and 100 Gigabit optics, emerging market opportunities and why this is the best time for a decade to be in the optical components industry.   

"This is probably the strongest growth we have seen since the last bubble of 1999-2000." Rafik Ward, Finisar

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Bringing WDM-PON to market

Significant power, size and cost challenges must be overcome before WDM-PON will be widely deployed.

 "We see just one way to bring down the cost, form-factor and energy consumption of the OLT’s multiple transceivers: high integration of transceiver arrays"

Klaus Grobe, ADVA Optical Networking

Considerable engineering effort will be needed to make next-generation optical access schemes using multiple wavelengths competitive with existing passive optical networks (PONs).

Such a multi-wavelength access scheme, known as a wavelength division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-PON), will need to embrace new architectures based on laser arrays and reflective optics, and use advanced photonic integration to meet the required size, power consumption and cost targets.

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UNIC silicon modulator

Kotura has detailed a compact, low-power silicon-based optical modulator; an important building block to enable dense on-chip optical interconnects. The modulator operates at up to 11Gbit/s, consumes 0.5mW and has an area of 1000µm².

This is the silicon photonic start-up’s first announced modulator. The design has been developed in conjunction with Sun Microsystems as part of the DAPRA Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communications (UNIC) programme.

An image of the modulator and a cross-section diagram of the ring waveguide. Source: Kotura

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