Infinera buying Coriant will bring welcome consolidation
Infinera is to purchase privately-held Coriant for $430 million. The deal will effectively double Infinera’s revenues, add 100 new customers and expand the systems vendor’s product portfolio.
Infinera's CEO, Tom FallonBut industry analysts, while welcoming the consolidation among optical systems suppliers, highlight the challenges Infinera faces making the Coriant acquisition a success.
“The low price reflects that this isn't the best asset on the market,” says Sterling Perrin, principal analyst, optical networking and transport at Heavy Reading. “They are buying $1 of revenue for 50 cents; the price reflects the challenges.”
Benefits
According to Perrin, there are still too many vendors facing "brutal price pressures" despite the optical industry being mature. Removing one vendor that has been cutting prices to win business is good news for the rest.
For Infinera, the acquisition of Coriant promises three main benefits, as outlined by its CEO, Tom Fallon, during a briefing addressing the acquisition.
The first is expanding its vertically-integrated business model across a wider portfolio of products. Infinera develops its own optical technology: its indium-phosphide photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and accompanying coherent DSPs that power its platforms. Having its own technology differentiates the optical performance of its platforms and helps it achieve leading gross margins of over 40 percent, said Fallon.
Exploiting the vertical integration model will be a central part of the Coriant acquisition. Indeed, the company mentioned vertical integration 21 times in as many minutes during its briefing outlining the deal. Infinera expects to deliver industry-leading growth and operating margins once it exploits the benefits of vertical integration across an expanded portfolio of platforms, said Fallon.
Having a seat at the table with the largest global service providers to strategise about where their business is going will be invaluable
Buying Coriant also gives Infinera much-needed scale. Not only will Infinera double its revenues - Coriant’s revenues were about $750 million in 2017 while Infinera’s were $741 million for the same period - but it will expand its customer base including key tier-one service providers and webscale players. According to Fallon, the newly combined company will include nine of the top 10 global tier-one service providers and the six leading global internet content providers.
Infinera admits it has struggled to break into the tier-one operators and points out that trying to enter is an expensive and time-consuming process, estimated at between $10 million to $20 million each time. “[Now, with Coriant,] having a seat at the table with the largest global service providers to strategise about where their business is going will be invaluable,” said Fallon.
Sterling Perrin of Heavy Reading The third benefit Infinera gains is an expanded product portfolio. Coriant has expertise in layer 3 networking, in the metro core with its mTera universal transport platform as well as SDN orchestration and white box technologies. Heavy Reading’s Perrin says Coriant has started development of a layer-3 router white box for edge applications.
Combining the two companies also results in a leading player in data centre interconnect.
“Coriant expands our portfolio, particularly in packet and automation where significant network investment is expected over the next decade,” said Fallon. The deal is happening at the right time, he said, as operators ramp spending as they undertake network transformation.
Infinera will pay $230 million in cash - $150 million up front and the rest in increments - and a further $200 million in shares for Coriant. The company expects to achieve cost savings of $250 million between 2019 and 2021 by combining the two firms, $100 million in 2019 alone. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018.
If a company is going to put that integrated product into their network, it’s a full-blown RFP process which Infinera may or may not win
Challenges
Industry analysts, while seeing positives for Infinera, have concerns regarding the deal.
A much-needed consolidation of weaker vendors is how George Notter, an analyst at the investment bank, Jefferies, describes the deal. For Infinera, however, continuing as before was not an option. Heavy Reading’s Perrin agrees: ”Infinera has been under a lot of pressure; their core business of long-haul has slowed.”
The deal brings benefits to Infinera: scale, complementary product sets, and the promise of being able to invest more in R&D to benefit its PIC technology, says Notter in a research note.
Gaining customers is also a key positive. “Infinera is really excited about getting the new set of customers and that is what they are paying for,” says Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting Market Research. “However, these customers were gained by pricing products at steep discounts.”
What is vital for Infinera is that it delivers its upcoming 2.4-terabit Infinite Capacity Engine 5 (ICE5) optical engine on time. The ICE5 is expected to ship in early 2019. In parallel, Infinera is developing its ICE6 due two years later. Infinera is developing two generations of ICE designs in parallel after being late to market with its current 1.2-terabit optical engine.
Infinera is really excited about getting the new set of customers and that is what they are paying for
But even if the ICE5 is delivered on time, upgrading Coriant's platforms will be a major undertaking. “It sounds like they are going to fit their optical engines in all of Coriant’s gear; I don’t see how that is going to happen anytime quickly,” says Perrin.
Customers bought Coriant's equipment for a reason. Once upgraded with Infinera’s PICs, these will be new products that have to undergo extensive lab testing and full evaluations.
Perrin questions how moving customers off legacy platforms to the new will not result in the service providers triggering a new request-for-proposal (RFP). “If a company is going to put that integrated product into their network, it’s a full-blown RFP process which Infinera may or may not win,” says Perrin. “Infinera talked a lot about the benefits of vertical integration but they didn’t really address the challenges and the specific steps they would take to make that work.”
LightCounting's Vladimir KozlovLightCounting’s Kozlov also questions how this will work.
“The story about vertical integration and scaling up PIC production is compelling, but how will they support Coriant products with the PIC?” he says. “Will they start making pluggable modules internally? Will Coriant’s customers be willing to move away from the pluggables and get locked into Infinera’s PICs? Do they know something that we don’t?”
While Infinera is a top five optical platform supplier globally it hasn’t dominated the market with its PIC technologies, says Perrin. “Even if they technically pull off the vertical integration with the Coriant products, how much is that going to win business for them?” he says. “It is one architecture in a mix that has largely gone to pluggables.”
Transmode
Infinera already has experience acquiring a systems vendor when it bought in 2015 metro-access player, Transmode. Strategically, this was a very solid acquisition, says Perrin, but the jury is still out as to its success.
“The integration, making it work, how Transmode has performed within Infinera hasn’t gone as well as they wanted,” says Perrin. “That said, there are some good opportunities going forward for the Transmode group.”
Infinera also had planned to integrate its PIC technology within Transmode’s products but it didn't make economic sense for the metro market. There may also have been pushback from customers that liked the Transmode products, says Perrin: “With Coriant it looks like they really are going to force the vertical integration.”
Infinera acknowledges the challenges ahead and the importance of overcoming them if it is to secure its future.
“Given the comparable sizes of each company’s revenues and workforce, we recognise that integration will be challenging and is vital for our ultimate success,” said Fallon.
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.
Coherent PIC
Elenion’s integrated modulator-receiver assembly is being used by Coriant for two CFP2 Analogue Coherent Optics (CFP2-ACO) modules as part of its Groove G30 platform.
The first is a short-reach CFP2-ACO for point-to-point 200-gigabit links that has a reach of at least 80km. The second is a high-performance CFP2-ACO that has a reach of up to 4,000km at 100 gigabits and 650km at 200 gigabits.
Schwerin says the company is now selling the coherent PIC to “a lot of people”. In addition to the CFP2-ACO, there is the Digital Coherent Optics (DCO) pluggable market where the PIC and the coherent digital signal processor (DSP) are integrated within the module. Examples include the CFP-DCO and the smaller CFP2-DCO which is now being designed into new systems. ADVA Optical Networking is using the CFP2-DCO for its Teraflex, as is its acquisition target MRV with its 200-gigabit coherent muxponder. Infinera’s latest XTM II platforms also use the CFP2-DCO.
We have got a library that has well over 1,000 elements
Using silicon photonics benefits the cost and performance of the coherent design, says Schwerin. The cost benefit is a result of optical integration. “You can look at it as a highly simplified supply chain,” says Schwerin. Coupling the electronics close to the optics also optimises overall performance.
Elenion is also targeting the line-card market for its coherent PIC. “This is one of the reasons why I wanted to stay out of the pluggable business,” says Schwerin. “There are a lot more customers out there if you stay out of pluggables because now you are selling an [optical] engine.”
The company is also developing a coherent PIC design that will support higher data rates such as 400- and 600-gigabit per lambda. “Without being too specific because we do remain stealthy, we have plans to support these applications,” says Schwerin.
Schwerin stresses that the real strength of the company is its design library used to develop its silicon photonics circuits. Elenion emerged out of a silicon photonics design-for-service company. “We have got a library that has well over 1,000 elements,” he says. Elenion says it can address custom design requests of companies using its design library.
Datacom
Elenion announced at the OFC show held in Los Angeles in March that it is working with Jabil AOC Technologies, a subsidiary of the manufacturing firm, Jabil Circuits. Elenion chose the contract manufacturer due to its ability to address both line-card and pluggable designs, the markets for its optical engines.
The two firms have also been working at the chip level on such issues as fibre attach, coupling the laser and adding the associated electronics. “We are trying to make the interface as elegant and streamlined as possible,” says Schwerin. “We have got initiatives underway so that you don't need these complex arrangements.”
Schwerin highlights the disparity between the unit volumes needed for the telecom and datacom markets. According to forecasts from market research firms, the overall coherent market is expected to grow to 800,000 and 1 million units a year by 2020. In contrast, the interfaces used inside one large-scale data centre can be up to 2 million. “To achieve rapid manufacturing and yield, you have got to simplify the process,” he says.
This is what Elenion is tackling. If 1,000 die can be made on a single silicon wafer, and knowing the interface volumes required and the yields, the total number of wafer runs can be determined. And it is the overall time taken from starting a wafer to the finished transceiver PIC output that Elenion is looking to shorten, says the CEO.
We ran that demo from 7 AM to 2 AM every day of the show
At OFC, Elenion hired a hotel suite near the convention centre to demonstrate its technologies to interested companies. One demonstration used its 25Gbps optical engine directly mounted on a Cavium QLogic network interface card (NIC) connecting a server to a high-capacity Cavium Xpliant Ethernet switch chip. The demo showed how 16 NICs could be connected to the switch chip for a total capacity of 400 gigabits. “No more direct-attached cables or active optical cables, literally fibre-to-the-server,” says Schwerin. “We ran that demo from 7 AM to 2 AM every day of the show.”
Elenion’s on-board optics design was based on the emerging Consortium of On-Board Optics (COBO) standard. “The Microsoft folks, we work with them closely, so obviously what we are doing follows their intent,” says Schwerin.
The optical engine will also support 56Gbps links when used with four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM-4) and the company is even eyeing 100Gbps interfaces. For now, Elenion’s datacom optical engine remains a technical platform but a product will soon follow.
The company’s datacom work is also benefiting its telecom designs. “The platform technology that we use for datacom has now found its way into the coherent programme, especially around the packaging,” says Schwerin.
* The article was changed on July 25th to mention that Elenion's PIC is being used in two Coriant CFP-ACOs.
The Open ROADM MSA adds new capabilities in Release 2.0
Xavier PougnardThe Open ROADM MSA, set up by AT&T, Ciena, Fujitsu and Nokia, is promoting interoperability between vendors’ ROADMs by specifying open interfaces for their control using software-defined networking (SDN) technology. Now, one year on, the MSA has 10 members, equally split between operators and systems vendors.
Orange joined the Open ROADM MSA last July and says it shares AT&T’s view that optical networks lack openness given the proprietary features of the vendors’ systems.
“As service providers, we suffer from lock-in where our networks are composed of equipment from a single vendor,” says Xavier Pougnard, R&D manager for transport networks at Orange Labs. “When we want to introduce another vendor for innovation or economic reasons, it is nearly impossible.”
This is what the MSA group wants to tackle with its open specifications for the data and management planes. The goal is to enable an operator to swap equipment without having to change their control by using a common, open management interface. “Right now, for every new provider, we need IT development for the management of the [network] node,” says Pougnard.
As service providers, we suffer from lock-in where our networks are composed of equipment from a single vendor. When we want to introduce another vendor for innovation or economic reasons, it is nearly impossible.
MSA status
The Open ROADM MSA has published two data sets as part of its Release 1.2. One set tackles 100-gigabit data plane interoperability by defining what is needed for two line-side transponders to talk to each other. The second set of specifications uses the YANG modelling language to allow the management of the transponders and ROADMs.
The group is now working on Release 2.0 that will enable longer reaches and exploit OTN switching. The specifications will also support flexgrid whereas Release 1.2 specifies 50GHz fixed channels only. Release 2.0 is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2017. “Service providers would like it as soon as possible,” says Pougnard.
Pougnard highlights the speed of development of an open MSA model with new releases issued every few months, far quicker that traditional standardisation bodies. It was this frustration with the slow pace of development of the standards bodies that led Orange to join the Open ROADM MSA.
Orange stresses that the Open ROADM will not be used for all dense wavelength-division multiplexing cases. There will be applications which require extended performance where a specific vendor's equipment will be used. “We do specify the use of an FEC [forward error correction] in the specification but there are more powerful FECs that extend the reach for 100-gigabit interfaces,” says Pougnard. But the underlying flexibility offered by the MSA trumps performance.
Trials
AT&T detailed in December a network demonstration of the Open ROADM technology. The operator used a 100-gigabit optical wavelength in its Dallas area network to connect two IP-MPLS routers using transponders and ROADMs from Ciena and Fujitsu.
Orange is targeting its own lab trials in the first half of this year using a simplified OpenDaylight SDN controller working with ROADMs from three systems vendors. “We want to showcase the technology and prove the added value of an open ROADM,” says Pougnard.
Orange is also a member of the Telecom Infra Project, a venture that includes Facebook and 10 operators to tackle telecom networks from access to the core. The two groups have had discussions about areas of possible collaboration but while the Open ROADM MSA wants to promote a single YANG model that includes the amplifiers of the line system, TIP expects there to be more than a single model. The two organisations also differ in their philosophies: the Open ROADM MSA concerns itself with the interfaces to the platforms whereas TIP also tackles the internal design of platforms.
Coriant, which is a member of TIP and the Open ROADM MSA, is keen for alignment. "As an industry we should try to make sure that certain elements such as open API definitions are aligned between TIP and the Open ROADM MSA," says Uwe Fischer, CTO of Coriant.
Meanwhile, the Open ROADM MSA will announce another vendor member soon and says additional operators are watching the MSA’s progress with interest.
Pougnard stresses how open developments such as the ROADM MSA require WDM engineers to tackle new things. “We have a tremendous shift in skills,” he says. “Now they need to work on the automation capability, on YANG modelling and Netconf.” Netconf - the IETF’s network configuration protocol - uses YANG models to enable the management of network devices such as ROADMs.
Elenion unveiled as a silicon photonics PIC company
- Elenion Technologies is making silicon photonics-based photonic integrated circuits
- The company has been active for two and a half years and has products already deployed
A privately-owned silicon photonics company that is already shipping products has dropped its state of secrecy to announce itself. Elenion Technologies is owned by Marlin Equity Partners, the investment firm that also owns systems vendor, Coriant.
“We are in the [optical] engine business,” says Larry Schwerin, CEO of Elenion Technologies. “We are developing a platform leveraging silicon photonics but we have other capabilities.”
Larry SchwerinElenion’s expertise includes indium phosphide, radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), packaging, and driver and control electronics circuit design. The RFIC expertise suggests the company also plans to address the mobility market.
The company will detail its first products prior to the OFC show next March.
Telecom and Datacom
Elenion’s initial focus is the telecom market where its products are already deployed, with Coriant being a likely early customer. “We are also very active in datacom which has a different set of requirements,” says Schwerin.
Telecom is the harder 'trade space' of the two segments, says Schwerin. Telecom designs have to be outside-plant hardened and Telcordia-compliant. “Proving that world is a good place to get started and focussed,” he says.
In contrast, the datacom market has shorter equipment life cycles with optical designs deployed in a more controlled environment. Datacom customers also don't just want pluggables. “They want on-board solutions, parallel solutions, and they request a cost of $1-per-gigabit,” says Schwerin.
The company is targeting optical module makers, systems vendors and the cloud operators
The challenges facing the large-scale data centre operators are multifold: how they drive more bandwidth to the server, how they make the server more effective, how they scale their switching fabric, how they better use their fibre infrastructure and how they meet their optics cost targets.
Elenion says it has detailed data on the construction and costs of data centres and how they will scale. "You need to have that expertise in order to design the platform that they are trying to do today and going forward," says Schwerin. The company is working to deliver an optical engine that will help the data centre operators address the issues of distance, power consumption, space and signal integrity, and which will meet their $1-per-gigabit cost target.
We have developed a set of tools and a set of expertise that lets us design very complex integrated optoelectronic systems at the chip scale
Expertise
Elenion is limited in what it can say until its first products are unveiled. What is clear is that the silicon photonics company has a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) capability that it is using for on-board optics and for pluggable designs such as the CFP2.
Michael Hochberg
“We have developed a set of tools and a set of expertise that lets us design very complex integrated opto-electronic systems at the chip scale,” says Michael Hochberg, CTO of Elenion.
According to Hochberg, Elenion is pulling complexity out of other systems and putting it into silicon. The value of such PICs is that it avoids having to deploy discrete optics such as lenses. And silicon is the ideal platform for scaling complexity, says Hochberg: “All the areas that we have developed expertise are things that we believe will need to be co-designed with the PIC.”
In the electronics industry, you tape things out and you expect them to work. That is what we are replicating here.
The company says it is building up a capability that has long existed in the semiconductor industry. "In the electronics industry, you tape things out and you expect them to work," says Hochberg. "That is what we are replicating here."
For datacom applications, Schwerin says that in addition to the PIC’s function, the company has developed a wafer-scale approach to packaging. Here, devices are packaged while still on the wafer rather than having to dice the wafer first. “You have got to get into the volumes of millions, not tens or hundreds of thousands,” says Schwerin. “That forces you into that space.”
The company is targeting optical module makers, systems vendors and the cloud operators as customers.
Origins
Schwerin was formerly the CEO of Capella Intelligent Subsystems, a developer of wavelength-selective switch technology, that was sold to Alcatel-Lucent (now Nokia) in 2013.
Hochberg was a director at the Optoelectronic Systems in Silicon (OpSIS) foundry and was a co-founder of silicon photonics company, Luxtera.
The two first met at a conference when Hochberg was running Silicon Lightwave Services (SLS), a silicon photonics design-for-service company. Schwerin became CEO of SLS and the company was bought by Merlin two and a half years ago to become Elenion. The name Elenion means starlight, a nod to J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.
“We are now introducing ourselves as we are getting enough requests that it seemed the appropriate time,” says Schwerin.
TIP seeks to shake up the telecom marketplace
Niall Robinson
Now, ten telcos, systems vendors, component and other players have joined Facebook as part of the Telecom Infra Project, or TIP, to bring the benefits of open-source design and white-box platforms to telecoms. TIP has over 300 members and has seven ongoing projects across three network segments of focus: access, backhaul, and core and management.
Facebook's involvement in a telecoms project is to benefit its business. The social media giant has 1.79 billion active monthly users and wants to make Internet access more broadly available. Facebook also has demanding networking requirements, both the linking of its data centres and supporting growing video traffic. It also wants better networks to support emerging services using technologies such as virtual reality headsets.
It is time to disrupt this closed market; it is time to reinvent everything we have today
The telecom operators want to collaborate with Facebook having seen how its Open Compute Project has created flexible, scalable equipment for the data centre. The operators also want to shake up the telecom industry. At the inaugural TIP summit held in November, the TIP chairman and CTO of SK Telecom, Alex Jinsung Choi, discussed how the scale and complexity of telecom networks make it hard for innovators and start-ups to enter the market. “It is time to disrupt this closed market; it is time to reinvent everything we have today,” said Choi during his TIP Summit talk.
Voyager
TIP unveiled a white-box packet optical platform dubbed Voyager at the summit. The one rack-unit (1RU) box is a project for backhaul. Voyager has been designed by Facebook and the platform’s specification has been made available to TIP.
Voyager is based on another platform Facebook has developed: the Wedge top-of-rack switch for the data centre. Wedge switches are now being made by several contract manufacturers. Each can be customised based on the operating system used and the applications loaded onboard. The goal is to adopt a similar approach with Voyager.
“Eventually, there will be something that is definitely market competitive in terms of hardware cost,” says Niall Robinson, vice president, global business development at ADVA Optical Networking, one of the companies involved in the Voyager initiative. “And you have got an open-source community developing a feature set from a software perspective.”
Other companies backing Voyager include Acacia Communications, Broadcom and Lumentum which are involved in the platform’s hardware design. Snaproute is delivering the software inside the box while first units are being made by the contract manufacturer, Celestica.
ADVA Optical Networking’s will provide a sales channel for Voyager and is interfacing it to its network management system. The system vendor will also provide services and software support. Coriant is another systems vendor backing the project. It is providing networking support including routeing and switching as well as dense WDM transmission capabilities.
This [initiative] has shown me that the whole supply and design chains for transport can be opened up; I find that fascinating.
Robinson describes TIP as one of the most ambitious and creative projects he has been involved in. “It is less around the design of the box," he says. "It is the shaking up of the ecosystem, that is what TIP is about.”
A 25-year involvement in transport has given Robinson an ingrained view that it is different to other aspects of telecom. For example, a vendor’s transport system must be at each end of the link due to the custom nature of platforms that are designed to squeeze maximum performance over a link. “In some cases, transport is different but what TIP maybe realises is that transport does not always have to be different,” says Robinson. “This [initiative] has shown me that the whole supply and design chains for transport can be opened up; I find that fascinating.”
Specification
At the core of the 1RU Voyager is the Broadcom StrataXGS Tomahawk. The 3.2-terabit switch chip is also the basis of the Wedge top-of-rack switch. The Tomahawk features 128 x 25 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) serdes to enable 32 x 100 gigabit ports, and supports layer-2 switching and layer-3 routeing.
Voyager uses 12, 100 Gigabit Ethernet client-side pluggable interfaces and four 200-gigabit networking interfaces based on Acacia’s AC-400 optical module. The AC-400 uses coherent optics and supports polarisation multiplexing, 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM). “If it was a pure transport box the input rate would equal the output rate but because it is a packet box, you can take advantage of layer 2 over-subscription,” says Robinson.
At layer-3 the total routeing capacity is 2 terabits, the sum of the client and network interfaces. “At layer-3, the Tomahawk chip does not know what is a client port and what is a networking port; they are just Ethernet ports on that device,” says Robinson.
ADVA Optical Networking chose to back Voyager because it does not have a packet optical platform in its product portfolio. Until now, it has partnered with Juniper Networks and Arista Networks when such functionality has been needed. “We are chasing certain customers that are interested in Voyager,” says Robinson. “We are enabling ourselves to play in the packet optical space with a self-contained box.”
Status and roadmap
The Voyager is currently in beta-prototype status and has already been tested in trials. Equinix has tested the box working with Lumentum’s open line system over 140km of fiber, while operator MTN has also tested Voyager.
The platform is expected to be generally available in March or April 2017, by when ADVA Optical Networking will have completed the integration of Voyager with its network management system.
Robinson says there are two ways Voyager could develop.
Source: Gazettabyte
One direction is to increase the interface and switching capacities of the 1RU box. Next-generation coherent digital signal processors that support higher baud rates will enable 400Gbps and even 600Gbps wavelengths using PM-64QAM. This could enable the line-side capacity to increase from the current 800Gbps to 2 or 3 terabits. And soon, 400Gbps client-side pluggable modules will become available. Equally, Broadcom is already sampling its next-generation Tomahawk II chip that has 6.4 terabits of switching capacity.
Another direction the platform could evolve is to add an backplane to connect multiple Voyagers. This is something already done with the Wedge '6-pack' that combines six Wedge switch cards. A Voyager 6-pack would result in a packet-optical platform with multiple terabits of switching and routeing capacity.
“This is an industry-driven initiative as opposed to a company-driven one,” says Robinson. “Voyager will go whichever way the industry thinks the lowest cost is.”
Corrected on Dec 22nd. The AC-400 is a 5"x7" module and not as originally stated.
Coriant's 134 terabit data centre interconnect platform
“We have several customers that have either purpose-built data centre interconnect networks or have data centre interconnect as a key application riding on top of their metro or long-haul networks,” says Jean-Charles Fahmy, vice president of cloud and data centre at Coriant.
Jean-Charles Fahmy
Each card in the platform is one rack unit (1RU) high and has a total capacity of 3.2 terabit-per-second, while the full G30 rack supports 42 such cards for a total platform capacity of 134 terabits. The G30's power consumption equates to 0.45W-per-gigabit.
The card supports up to 1.6 terabit line-side capacity and up to 1.6 terabit of client side interfaces. The card can hold eight silicon photonics-based CFP2-ACO (analogue coherent optics) line-side pluggables. For the client-side optics, 16, 100 gigabit QSFP28 modules can be used or 20 QSFP+ modules that support 40 or 4x10 gigabit rates.
Silicon photonics
Each CFP2-ACO supports 100, 150 or 200 gigabit transmission depending on the modulation scheme used. For 100 gigabit line rates, dual-polarisation, quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) is used, while dual-polarisation, 8 quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-8-QAM) is used for 150 gigabit, and DP-16-QAM for 200 gigabit.
A total of 128 wavelengths can be packed into the C-band equating to 25.6 terabit when using DP-16-QAM.
It [the data centre interconnect] is a dynamic competitive market and in some ways customer categories are blurring. Cloud and content providers are becoming network operators, telcos have their own data centre assets, and all are competing for customer value
Coriant claims the platform can achieve 1,000 km using DP-16-QAM, 2,000 km using 8-QAM and up to 4,000 km using DP-QPSK. That said, the equipment maker points out that the bulk of applications require distances of a few hundred kilometers or less.
This is the first detailed CFP2-ACO module that supports all three modulation formats. Coriant says it has worked closely with its strategic partners and that it is using more than one CFP2-ACO supplier.
Acacia is one silicon photonics player that announced at OFC 2015 a chip that supports 100, 150 and 200 gigabit rates however it has not detailed a CFP2-ACO product yet. Acacia would not comment whether it is supplying modules for the G30 or whether it has used its silicon photonics chip in a CFP2-ACO. The company did say it is providing its silicon photonics products to a variety of customers.
“Coriant has been active in engaging the evolving ecosystem of silicon photonics,” says Fahmy. “We have also built some in-house capability in this domain.” Silicon photonics technology as part of the Groove G30 is a combination of Coriant’s own in-house designs and its partnering with companies as part of this ecosystem, says Fahmy: “We feel that this is one of the key competitive advantages we have.”
The company would not disclose the degree to which the CFP2-ACO coherent transceiver is silicon photonics-based. And when asked if the different CFP2-ACOs supplied are all silicon photonics-based, Fahmy answered that Coriant’s supply chain offers a range of options.
Oclaro would not comment as to whether it is supplying Coriant but did say its indium-phosphide CFP2-ACO has a linear interface that supports such modulation formats as BPSK, QPSK, 8-QAM and 16-QAM.
So what exactly does silicon photonics contribute?
“Silicon photonics offers the opportunity to craft system architectures that perhaps would not have been possible before, at cost points that perhaps may not have been possible before,” says Fahmy.
Modular design
Coriant has used a modular design for its 1RU card, enabling data centre operators to grow their system based on demand and save on up-front costs. For example, Coriant uses ‘sleds’, trays that slide onto the card that host different combinations of CFP2-ACOs, coherent DSP functionality and client-side interface options.
“This modular architecture allows pay-as-you-grow and, as we like to say, power-as-you-grow,” says Fahmy. “It also allows a simple sparing strategy.”
The Groove G30 uses a merchant-supplied coherent DSP-ASIC. In 2011, NSN invested in ClariPhy the DSP-ASIC supplier, and Coriant was founded from the optical networking arm of NSN. The company will noy say the ratio of DSP-ASICs to CFP2-ACOs used but it is possible that four DSP-ASICs serve the eight CFP2-ACOs, equating to two CFP2-ACOs and a DSP-ASIC per sled.
“Web-scale customers will most probably start with a fully loaded system, while smaller cloud players or even telcos may want to start with a few 10 or 40 gigabit interfaces and grow [capacity] as required,” says Fahmy.
Open interfaces
Coriant has designed the G30 with two software environments in mind. “The platform has a full set of open interfaces allowing the product to be integrated into a data centre software-defined networking (SDN) environment,” says Bill Kautz, Coriant’s director of product solutions. “We have also integrated the G30 into Coriant’s network management and control software: the TNMS network management and the Transcend SDN controller.”
Coriant also describes the G30 as a disaggregated transponder/ muxponder platform. The platform does not support dense WDM line functions such as optical multiplexing, ROADMs, amplifiers or dispersion compensation modules. Accordingly, Groove is designed to interoperate with Coriant’s line-system options.
Groove can also be used as a source of alien wavelengths over third-party line systems, says Fahmy. The latter is a key requirement of customers that want to use their existing line systems.
“It [the data centre interconnect] is a dynamic competitive market and in some ways customer categories are blurring,” says Fahmy. “Cloud and content providers are becoming network operators, telcos have their own data centre assets, and all are competing for customer value.”
Further information
IHS hosted a recent webinar with Coriant, Cisco and Oclaro on 100 gigabit metro evolution, click here
The quiet period of silicon photonics
Michael Hochberg discusses his book on silicon photonics and the status of the technology. Hochberg is director of R&D at Coriant's Advanced Technology Group. Previously he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Delaware and at the National University of Singapore. He was also a director at the Optoelectronic Systems Integration in Silicon (OpSIS) foundry, and was a co-founder of silicon photonics start-up, Luxtera.
Part 2: An R&D perspective
If you are going to write a book on silicon photonics, you might as well make it different. That is the goal of Michael Hochberg and co-author Lukas Chrostowski, who have published a book on the topic.
Michael HochbergHochberg says there is no shortage of excellent theoretical textbooks and titles that survey the latest silicon photonics research. Instead, the authors set themselves the goal of creating a design manual to help spur a new generation of designers.
The book aims to provide designers with all the necessary tools and know-how to develop silicon photonics circuits without needing to be specialists in optics.
“One of the limiting factors in terms of the growth and success of the field is how quickly can we breed up more and more designers,” says Hochberg.
The book - Silicon Photonics Design: From Devices to Systems - starts by exploring the main silicon photonics building blocks, from optical waveguides and grating couplers to modulators, photo-detectors and lasers. The book then addresses putting the parts together, with chapters on tools, fabrication, testing and packaging before finishing with system design examples.
The numerical tools used in the book are mostly based on the finite-difference time-domain method, what the authors describe as the typical workhorse in silicon photonics design. Hochberg admits that the systems software tools, in contrast, are less mature: “It is a moving target that will change year to year.”
Myths
Hochberg is also a co-author of a Nature Photonics’ paper, published in 2012, that debunks some of the myths regarding silicon photonics. “We wrote the myths paper after seeing an upswing in the ratio of hype-to-results going on,” says Hochberg.
He says part of the problem was that people were claiming silicon photonics was going to solve problems that it was plainly unsuited to address, for example integrating photonics with cutting-edge ultra-scale sub-micron electronics, for instance at 16 nm and 28 nm nodes. “That is not a practical solution for any near term problem,” says Hochberg.
More recent events, such as Intel’s announcement in February that it is delaying the commercial introduction of its silicon photonics products, highlights how bringing the technology to market is a significant engineering challenge. Instead, we are in a quiet period for silicon photonics, he says. Companies are getting into serious product mode, where they stop publishing and start focussing on building a product.
Moreover, these products - what he refers to as second-generation silicon photonics designs - are increasingly sophisticated with more functions or channels placed on the chip. “It is the standard story of almost any technology in silicon,” he says. “Silicon wins when you can do more stuff on a single chip.”
Silicon photonics and III-V
Hochberg stresses that while it is an understandable desire, it is very hard to compare the performance of silicon photonics as a whole with traditional optical components using III-V compounds. The issue being that silicon photonics comprises many different platforms where designers have made tradeoffs. The same applies to III-V compounds where there are hundreds of processes aimed at thousands of different products. “It is very hard to compare them in a generic way,” he says.
“The great advantage silicon photonics gives you is access to first-rate fabrication infrastructure,” says Hochberg. Silicon photonics offers 8- and 12-inch wafers, high volume foundries, high process control, the ability to ramp to high volumes and achieve high yields of complex-structure designs with hundreds, even thousands of components on-chip.
In contrast, III-V materials such as indium phosphide and gallium arsenide offer higher mobilities - electrons and holes move faster - and, unlike silicon, can straightforwardly emit light.
“The downside is that III-V foundries use technology processes that silicon stopped using 20 to 30 years ago,” says Hochberg. Wafers that are 2-, 3- or 4-inch in diameter, lithography that is ten times coarser than is used for silicon, process controls that are less advanced, and less automation.
If you are going to design a complex chip with lots of different components that require a predictable relationship with each other, this is where silicon tends to beat III-Vs, he says.
But the claim of large silicon wafers and huge volumes is what silicon photonics proponents have been promoting for years, and which has fed some of the false expectation associated with the emerging technology, says one industry analyst.
Hochberg counters by highlighting two trends that play in silicon photonics’ favour.
One is the well-known one of optics slowly replacing copper. This has been going on for 40 to 50 years, he says, in long haul, then in metro and now linking equipment in the data centre. “This will continue for shorter and shorter distances and then, at some point, stop,” he says. That said, Hochberg stresses that there are other applications for silicon photonics besides data communications.
“Just because you run out of opportunities at shorter and shorter reach at some point in the distant future, doesn't mean that the field collapses,” he says. “There's a lot of other cool stuff being done in silicon photonics these days with serious commercial potential.” Example applications include medical and remote sensing.
Once you can do something in silicon and do it adequately well, it tends to displace everything else from the majority of the market
The second trend he highlights is that silicon ends up dominating fields, not necessarily because it is the best choice in terms of performance but because it ends up being so cheap in scale. “Once you can do something in silicon and do it adequately well, it tends to displace everything else from the majority of the market.”
There are up-front costs of getting silicon photonics into a CMOS fab so companies have to be judicious in choosing the applications they tackle. “But once the infrastructure gets going to make a new application, the speed with which the industry can scale is just mind-blowing,” he said.
At Coriant, Hochberg leads a team that is doing advanced R&D. “We are doing advanced research with the goal to develop new technology that may eventually make its way into product.”
Does that include silicon photonics? “There is certainly an interest in silicon photonics; it is one of the things we are exploring,” says Hochberg.
Further reading:
Book: Michael Hochberg and Lukas Chrostowski, Silicon Photonics Design: From Devices to Systems, Cambridge University Press, 2015
Paper: Myths and rumours of silicon photonics, Nature Photonics, Vol 6, April 2012.
Coriant adds optical control to SDN framework
Coriant's CTO, Uwe Fischer, explains its Intelligent Optical Control and how the system will complement Transport SDN.
"You either master all that complexity at once, or you find the right entry point and provide value for each concrete challenge, and extend step-by-step from there"
Uwe Fischer, CTO of Coriant
Coriant has deployed a networking framework that it says will comply with Transport SDN, the software-defined networking (SDN) implementation for the wide area network (WAN).
The company's Intelligent Optical Control system is already deployed with one large North American operator while Coriant is working to install the system with other Tier 1 customers.
Work to extend SDN technology beyond the data centre to work across operators' transport networks has just begun. The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), for example, has established an Optical Transport Working Group to define the extensions needed to enable SDN control of the transport layer and not just packet.
"SDN and optical networking go together nicely; they are not decoupled but make up an end-to-end overall framework," says Uwe Fischer, CTO at Coriant.
The Intelligent Optical Control is designed to tackle immediate networking issues as Transport SDN is developed. Coriant says its system complies with the ONF's three networking layer SDN model. The top, application layer interfaces with the middle, control layer. And it is at the control layer where the SDN controller oversees the network elements found in the third, infrastructure layer.
Intelligent Optical Control adds two other components to the model. An extra intelligence component in the control layer that sits between the SDN controller and the infrastructure layer. This intelligence is designed to exploit the intricacies of the optical layer.
Coriant has also added an application at the topmost layer to automate operational procedures. "SDN at the application layer is centered around service creation," says Fischer. "We see a complete set of other applications which automate operational workflows."
Optical intelligence
One key benefit of SDN is the central view it has of the network and its resources. Such centralised control works well in the data centre and packet networking. Operators' networks are more complex, however, housing multiple vendors' equipment and multiple networking layers and protocols.
The ONF's Optical Transport Working Group is investigating two approaches - direct and abstract models - to enable the OpenFlow standard to extend its control across all the transport layers.
With the direct model, an SDN controller will talk to each network element, controlling its forwarding behaviour and port characteristics. The abstract model, in contrast, will enable the controller to talk to a network element or an intermediate controller or 'mediation'. This mediation performs a translator role, enacting requests from the SDN controller.
The direct model interests certain ONF members due to its potential of reduce the cost of networking equipment by moving much of the software from each element to the SDN controller. The abstract model, in contrast, has the benefit of limiting how much the controller needs to be exposed to the underlying network's details.
Coriant says it has yet to form a view as to the benefits of the direct and abstract ONF models. That said, Fischer does not see any mechanisms being discussed in the ONF that will fully exploit the potential of the photonic network. Accordingly, Coriant has added its own intelligence that sits between the SDN controller and the photonic layer.
“We fully comply with the approach of an SDN controller, however, we put another layer in between the control layer and the infrastructure layer,” says Fischer. “We consider it a part of the control layer, but adding the planning and routing intelligence to leverage the full performance of the infrastructure layer underneath."
Fischer says there is a role for abstraction at the photonic layer but perhaps only for metro networks. "We currently don't think this will really extend to the wide area photonic layer," he says.
"The added intelligence can leverage the full performance of the WDM network because it knows all the planning rules in detail," says Fischer. It does multi-layer optimisation across the transport layers. Coriant has added the intelligence because it does not think the transport-network-specific aspects can be centralised in a generic way.
Automated operations
Coriant's Intelligent Optical Controller also adds an application to automate operational procedures. Fischer cites how the application layer component benefits the workflow when a service is activated in the network.
With each service request, the Intelligent Optical Control details whether the new service can be squeezed onto existing infrastructure and details the service performance parameters to be expected, such as latency and the guaranteed bandwidth. "The operator can immediately judge the service level they would get," says Fischer.
Another planning mode supports the adding of equipment at the infrastructure layer. This enables a comparison to be made as to how the service level would improve with extra equipment in place.
If the operator can justify that business case for new hardware, the workflow is then automated. The tool creates the bill of materials, the electronic order, and the configuration and planning data needed to implement the hardware in the network.
Coriant says equipment and services can be time-tagged. If an engineer is known to be visiting a site once the hardware becomes available, the card can be pre-assigned and automatically used once it is plugged in. "There is a full consistency as to how the hardware is managed and optimised towards service creation," says Fischer.
Coriant is working with its major customers to create a testbed to demonstrate an SDN implementation of IP-over-DWDM. "It will involve interworking with third-party routers, and using SDN controllers to control the packet part of the network with Openflow and other mechanisms, and then connected to the Intelligent Optical Controller."
The goal is to demonstrate that Coriant's approach complies with this use case while better exploiting the optical network's capabilities.
Fischer says optical networking is moving to a new phase as transmission speeds move beyond 100 Gigabit.
"We are entering an interesting phase as capacity and reach hit the limits of practical networks," he says. "This means we are talking about flexible modulation formats and variously composed super-channels for 400 Gigabit and 1 Terabit."
In effect, a virtualisation of bandwidth is taking place at the photonic layer. "This fits nicely into the SDN principle as on the one hand it virtualises capacity, which very much fits in the model of virtualising infrastructure."
But it also brings challenges.
"There is currently not a good practical means to manage such flexible capacity at the photonic layer," says Fischer. This, says Coriant, it what its customers are saying. It also explains Coriant's decision to add the optical controller. "You either master all that complexity at once, or you find the right entry point and provide value for each concrete challenge, and extend step-by-step from there," says Fischer.
Ovum on Infinera's Intelligent Transport Network strategy
Infinera announced that TeliaSonera International Carrier (TSIC) is extending the use of its DTN-X to its European network, having already adopted the platform in the US. Infinera has also outlined the next evolution in its networking strategy, dubbed the Intelligent Transport Network.
Dana Cooperson
Gazettabyte asked Dana Cooperson, vice president and practice leader, and Ron Kline, principal analyst, both in the network infrastructure group at market research firm, Ovum, about the announcement and Infinera's outlined strategy.
What has been announced
TSIC is adding Infinera's DTN-X to boost network capacity in Europe and accommodate its own growing IP traffic. TSIC already has deployed 100 Gig technology in its European network, using a Coriant product. The wholesale operator will sell 100 Gig services, activating capacity using the DTN-X's 'instant bandwidth' feature based on already-lit 100 Gig light paths that make up its 500 Gigabit super-channels.
Meanwhile, Infinera has detailed its Intelligent Transport Network strategy that extends its digital optical network that performs optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion using its 500 Gig photonic integrated circuits (PICs) coupled with OTN (Optical Transport Network) switching to include additional features. These include multi-layer switching – reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) – and PICs with terabit capacity
Q&A with Dana Cooperson and Ron Kline
Q. What is significant about Infinera's Intelligent Transport Network strategy?
Dana C: Infinera is being more public about its longer-term strategy - to 2020 - which includes evolving from its digital optical network messaging to a network that includes multiple layers and types of switching, and more automation. Infinera is not announcing more functionality availability now.
Infinera makes much play about its 500 Gig super-channels. More recently it has detailed such platform features as instant bandwidth and Fast Shared Mesh Protection supported in hardware. Are these features giving operators something new and is Infinera gaining market share as a result?
Dana C: Instant Bandwidth provides a way for Infinera’s operator customers to have their cake and eat it. They can install 500 Gig super-channels ahead of demand, and not pay for each 100 Gig sub-channel until they have a need for that bandwidth. It is a simple process at that point to 'turn on' the next 100 Gig worth of bandwidth within the super-channel.
By installing all five 100 Gig channels at once, the operator can simplify operations - lower opex - and allow quicker time-to-revenue without having to take the capex hit until the bandwidth needs materialise. This is an improvement over the DTN platform, which gave customers the 10x10 Gig architecture to let them pre-position bandwidth before the need for it materialised and save on opex, but at the cost of higher up-front capex than was ideal.
Talking to TSIC confirm that this added flexibility the DTN-X provides has allowed them to win wholesale business from competitors while tying capex more directly to revenue.
Ron K: Although pay-as-you go capability is available, analysis of 100 Gig shipments to date indicate most customers are paying for all five up front.
Dana C: I have not directly talked with an Infinera customer that has confirmed the benefit of Fast Shared Mesh Protection, but the feature certainly seems to be of value to customers and prospects. Our research indicates the continued search for better, more efficient mesh protection. Hardware-enabled protection should provide better latency (higher speed).
Ron K: Resiliency and mesh protection are critical requirements if you want to participate in the market. Shared mesh assumes that you have idle protection capacity available in case there is a failure. That is expensive. However, with Infinera’s technology - the PIC and Instant Bandwidth - it is not as difficult.
Restoration is all about speed – how fast can you get the network back up. It is not always milliseconds, sometimes it is half a minute. But during catastrophic failure events such as an earthquake, where a user can loose entire nodes, 30 seconds may not be so bad. Infinera has implemented the switch in hardware, based on a pre-planned map, so it is quicker.
Dana C: As for what impact these capabilities are having on market share, Infinera has climbed to the No.3 player in 100 Gig DWDM in three quarters since the DTN-X has become available.
They’ve jumped back up to No.4 globally in backbone WDM/CPO-T (converged packet optical transport) after sinking to sixth when they were losing share because they were without a viable 40 Gig solution. They made the right call at that time to focus on 100 Gig systems based on the 500 Gig PIC rather than chase 40 Gig. They are both keeping and expanding with existing DTN customers, TSIC being one, and picking up new customers.
Ron Kline
Ron K:They are definitely picking up share. However, I’m not sure if they can sustain it. The reason for the share jump is they are selling 100 Gig, five at a time. Remember, most customers elect to pay for all five. That means future sales will lag because customers have pre-positioned the bandwidth.
Looking at the customers is probably a better indicator: Infinera has some 27 customers, maybe 30 by now, which provide a good embedded base. Still, 27 customers is low compared to Ciena, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and even Cisco.
When Infinera first announced the DTN-X in 2011 it talked about how it would add MPLS support. Now outlining its Intelligent Transport Network strategy it has still to announce MPLS support. Do operators not need this network feature yet in such platforms and if not, why?
Dana C: The market is still sorting out exactly what is needed for sub-wavelength switching and where it is needed. Cisco’s and Juniper’s approaches are very different in the routing world —essentially, a lower-cost MPLS blade for the CRS versus a whole new box in the PTX; there is no right way there.
Within packet-aware optical products, the same is true: What is the right level of integration of OTN versus MPLS? It depends on where you are in the network, what that carrier’s service mix is, and how fast the mix is changing.
Many carriers are still struggling with their rigid organisational structures, and how best to manage products that are optical and packet in equal measure. So I don’t think Infinera is late, they are just reacting to their customers’ priorities and doing other things first.
Ron K: This is the $64,000 question: MPLS versus OTN. I’m not sure how it will eventually play out. I am asking service providers now.
OTN is a carrier protocol developed for carriers by carriers (the replacement for SONET/SDH). They will be the ones to use it because they have multi-service networks and need the transparency OTN provides. Google types and cable operators will not use OTN switching - they will lean towards the label-switched path (LSP) route. Even Tier-1 operators who have both types of networks will most likely maintain separation.
"The trick is to optimise around the requirements that net you the biggest total available market and which maximise your strengths and minimise your weaknesses. You can’t be all things to all carriers."
If Infinera has its digital optical network, why is it now also talking about ROADMs? And does having both benefit operators?
Dana C: Yes, having both benefits operators. From discussions with Infinera's customers, it is true that the digital nodes give them flexibility, but they do introduce added cost. For those nodes where customers have little need to add/ drop traffic, a ROADM would provide a more cost-efficient option to a node that performs OEO for all the traffic. So, with a ROADM option customers would have more control over node design.
Infinera talks about its next-gen PICs that will support a Terabit and more. After nearly a decade of making PICs, how does Ovum view the significance of the technology?
Dana C: While more vendors are doing photonic integration R&D, and some - Huawei comes to mind - have released some PIC-based products, no one has come close to Infinera in what it can do with photonic integration. Speaking with quite a few of Infinera’s customers, they are very happy with the technology, the system, and the support.
Each generation of PIC requires a significant R&D effort, but it does provide differentiation. Infinera has managed to stay focused and implement on time and on spec. I see them as the epitome of a “specialist” vendor. They are of similar size to Coriant and Tellabs, which have seen their fortunes wane, and ADVA Optical Networking. So I would say they are a very good example of what focus and differentiation can do.
Now, is the PIC the only way to approach system architecture? No. As noted before, some Infinera clients have told me that the lack of a ROADM has hurt them in competitive situations, as did the need to pay for all the pre-positioned bandwidth up front (true for the DTN, not the DTN-X).
From my days in product development, I know you have to optimise around a set of requirements, and the trick is to optimise around the requirements that net you the biggest total available market and which maximise your strengths and minimise your weaknesses. You can’t be all things to all carriers.
What is significant about the latest TeliaSonera network win and what does it mean for Coriant?
Dana C: Infinera is announcing an extension of its deployments at TSIC from North America to now include Europe as well. When you ask what this means to Coriant, their incumbent supplier in Europe, the answer is not clear cut. This gives Infinera an expanded hunting licence and it gives Coriant some cause for worry.
TSIC values both vendors and both will have their place in the European network. TSIC plans to use the vendors in different regions.
I am sure TSIC will try and play each off against the other to get the best price. It is looking for more flexibility and some healthy competition.