Alcatel-Lucent reveals its 100Gbps-coherent hand
“It would be irresponsible of any system vendor to overlook a solution that can bring a cost advantage to their customer”
Sam Bucci, Alcatel-Lucent
What is being announced?
- Alcatel-Lucent has a commercially available 100Gbps optical transmission system.
- 40Gbps coherent transmission is also supported.
- Implemented as part of the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS), the platform has a capacity of 500 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) per rack, or a bay – made up of three racks – capacity of 1.5 Terabit-per-second.
- The system specification includes 88, 100Gbps dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) lightpaths at 50GHz spacing that span the extended C-band; a reach of between 1,500 and 2,000km using coherent-optimised optical amplifiers, and the ability to operate alongside existing 10 and 40Gbps wavelengths without needing a guard-band between them (for more detail, click here).
- Some 20 operators are lined up to trial the 100Gbps technology. These include operators that have deployed the 1830 PSS and new ones.
- Telefònica and Softbank Telecom are two operators known to be trialling the 100Gbps system, Alcatel-Lucent will announce a third next week.
Why is the announcement important?
Alcatel-Lucent is the latest system vendor to announce a commercially available 100Gbps system. Until now Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks unit, now owned by Ciena, and Ciena itself had commercially available systems. Indeed Verizon Business deployed Nortel’s 100Gbps system for a route linking Paris and Frankfurt in late 2009.
"What will be a significant differentiator is the control/ management plane interworking across platforms - the integration of IP MPLS with optical networking products."
Ron Kline, Ovum
Alcatel-Lucent claims to be the first vendor to offer a 100Gbps system using a single carrier. Ciena/Nortel’s current offering is an extension of its 40Gbps coherent system and uses two 50Gbps sub-carriers that fit into a 50GHz channel.
But analysts downplay the significance of the advent of a 100Gbps single-carrier system. “Technology leads are short-lived,” says Ron Kline, principal analyst, network infrastructure at Ovum. "I’m not sure if there is a preference between single- versus dual-carrier from service providers either.”
What will be a significant differentiator, says Kline, is the control/ management plane interworking across platforms - the integration of IP MPLS with optical networking products. “Alcatel-Lucent is one of the few vendors which do both well and may have an edge pulling it off,” he says.
Ovum’s Dana Cooperson thinks it is significant that, like Ciena, and unlike some others, Alcatel-Lucent is also doing 40Gbps coherent. “I’ve heard some folks say they think 40 Gig coherent isn’t going anywhere, but the reasoning hasn’t made sense to me,” says Cooperson, Ovum’s vice president, network infrastructure. “If you have bad fibre, which loads of carriers do, and you want a mixed channel capability, which all carriers do, you’ll expect to get both in the same product.”
What’s been done?
Alcatel-Lucent’s 100Gbps system implements polarisation multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) modulation with coherent detection. The coherent receiver is based on an in-house application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that includes high-speed analogue-to-digital (a/d) converters and a digital signal processor (DSP).
Alcatel-Lucent would not say if the ASIC uses a 60nm or 45nm CMOS process or what the sampling rate of its a/d converters are but it did say that it has built-in sufficient headroom to operate at a 64Gsamples-per-second rate. The system also uses hard-decision forward error correction (FEC) but, according to Sam Bucci, vice president, terrestrial portfolio management at Alcatel-Lucent, it is looking at a soft decision FEC scheme for a future version “that is not too far away”.
Additional system performance characteristics, according to Bucci, include the ability for the lightpath to travel through as many as 20 reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) before needing optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion. The system also has a tolerance of at least 30ps for polarisation mode dispersion and 60,000 ps/nm for chromatic dispersion, says Bucci.
For 40Gbps coherent transmission, Alcatel-Lucent is using polarisation multiplexing binary phase-shift keying (PM-BPSK). Since less information is encoded on the symbol streams, this is a more demanding implementation because the implementation operates at 20Gbaud-per-second rather than the 10Gbaud-per-second of 40Gbps PM-QPSK coherent systems.“We were looking for a solution that was applicable not just for terrestrial but for submarine,” says Bucci. “Therefore the reach we were looking to achieve was greater than perhaps could be accomplished by other modulation formats.”
Alcatel-Lucent says PM-BPSK is also better able to withstand non-linear effects such as cross-phase modulation.
Is Alcatel-Lucent open to adopting an ASIC from a third-party developer for its future 100Gbps systems? “It would be irresponsible of any system vendor to overlook a solution that can bring a cost advantage to their customer,” says Bucci. “If there is a solution that can fit into the scheme we have developed, then yes, we would have to consider it if it produces an economic advantage.” Such an 'economic advantage' would have to be significantly more than just a 10 percent cost-saving, he says.
Volume production of the 100Gbps system will begin at the end of June 2010. Two client-side interface boards are available: a 10x10Gbps and a 100Gbps native port using a pluggable CFP transceiver.
Ciena post-MEN
“The 40G and 100G technology were key to the deal and we made sure that the core team was still there”
Tom Mock, Ciena
The company has announced the CN 5150 service aggregation switch, added Nortel’s 40 Gigabit-per-seconds (Gbps) coherent transmission technology to its flagship CN 4200 platform, and announced 140 job cuts, mostly in Europe. US operator AT&T has also selected the company as one of two suppliers of its optical and transport equipment.
Ciena provides optical transport, optical switching and Carrier Ethernet equipment. “We were finding it difficult to fund the required R&D in all three segments,” says Tom Mock, senior vice president of strategic planning at Ciena. “We saw this [the MEN acquisition] as an opportunity to bring good technology on board and give the company the scale needed to execute in these technology areas.”
According to Mock, Ciena was one of several firms interested in the Nortel unit but that Nokia Siemens Networks was the main counter-bidder in the auction process. Ciena won after agreeing to pay US $773.8 million, gaining MEN’s R&D group and associated sales and marketing.
In particular, it gained the R&D for optical transport – Nortel’s Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 product line for 40Gbps and 100Gbps, the Optical Metro 5200 metro and enterprise platform, Carrier Ethernet, and the R&D for software and network management. Most of these activities are based in Ottawa, Ontario.
“We had pretty good solutions in optical switching and carrier Ethernet but we were looking for a stronger transport offering, which is what Nortel brought to us,” says Mock. The acquisition, which effectively doubles the company’s size, means that Ciena now plays in a “$18 billion sandbox” comprising optical networking and Ethernet transport and services, according to market research firm Ovum.
Did Ciena secure Nortel’s MEN’s key staff, given the lengthy period – over a year – to complete the acquisition? “We agreed with Nortel that we would get 2000 staff out of a total of 2300 staff,” says Mock.
Yet Ciena had no visibility regarding staff since Nortel remained a competitor until the deal was completed. “We were very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the people who were in MEN,” says Mock. “When companies are in hard times the best people begin to leave, and because of the uncertainty I’m sure some people did leave.”
Ciena claims it secured MEN’s core 40 and 100Gbps team despite announcements such as Infinera's that it had recruited John McNicol, a senior engineer involved in the development of Nortel’s coherent technology. “The 40G and 100G technology were key to the deal and we made sure that the core team was still there,” says Mock.
He also dismisses the view that Nortel’s 100Gbps coherent technology market lead has been eroded due to the uncertainty. Mock claims it has a 12- to 18-month lead and points to Verizon Business’ deployment of Nortel’s 100Gbps system in late 2009 as proof that MEN continued to push the technology.
Strategy
Ciena’s primary focus is on what it calls carrier optical Ethernet, described by Mock as the marrying of the capacity scaling and reliability of optical transport with the ubiquity, flexibility and economics of Ethernet.
For Ciena this translates to three main product lines:
- Packet optical transport, primarily optical transport with some aggregation.
- Packet optical switching based on Ciena’s CoreDirector platform with its time-division multiplexing (TDM) and Ethernet switching, as well as control plane technology.
- Carrier Ethernet service delivery.
According to Ovum, Ciena is now the third “billion dollar club” optical networking vendor member with a 9% market share, behind Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent, with 24% and 19%, respectively. It also becomes the North American leader, with a 20% share while improving its standing in all other regional markets. In contrast, for Ethernet the combined company had only 3% share in 2009. “We are emerging as a leader in the Carrier Ethernet space,” claims Mock. “In 4Q 2009 we were leading in North America, according to Heavy Reading.”
Ciena sees optical transport and switching blurring but says that most of its customers still see these as separate products. “Both our packet optical switching and packet optical transport platforms can be used in these applications, for example the OME 6500 is looked at as a transport device but it has TDM and packet switching as well,” says Mock. But with time Ciena says optical switching and optical transport product families will increasingly consolidate.
What next?
Having completed the deal, one of the first things Ciena did was determine its product portfolio and tell its operator customers its plans.
Issues set to preoccupy Ciena for the next 12 to 18 months include the integration of Nortel’s 40Gbps and 100Gbps technology onto Ciena’s transport and switching platforms, getting the control plane of Ciena’s switching product integrated onto Nortel’s products, and bringing all the products under common network management.
At OFC/ NFOEC 2010 Ciena showcased Nortel’s OME 6500 transmitting over Ciena’s CN 4200 line system with both being overseen by Ciena’s OnCenter management software. “I wouldn’t point to the network management integration as a finished product but a step along the path,” says Mock.
According to Ovum, the demonstrations included 100Gbps over 1,500km of Corning ultra-low-loss fiber, 100Gbps over 800km in the presence of large and fast polarisation mode dispersion transients, and 40Gbps ultra-long haul transmission over 3,500km.
Ciena has said it expects its business to grow at least at the market rate: 10 to 12 percent yearly.
AT&T domain supplier
In April, AT&T announced that it had selected Ciena as a domain supplier. AT&T's domain supplier programme involves the operator splitting its networking requirements across several technologies, choosing two players for each domain. AT&T plans to work closely with each domain supplier ensuring that AT&T gains equipment tailored to its requirements while vendors such as Ciena can focus their R&D spending by seeing early the operator’s roadmap.
Did Ciena acquire Nortel to become a domain partner? “We would not make an acquisition to win the business of any one carrier,” says Mock. “But we realised that if we going to be a significant player in next-generation infrastructure we needed a certain critical mass, in portfolio and market coverage globally.
“Did we get selected because of Nortel, it’s hard to say – I’m sure it didn’t hurt - but we've been a supplier to AT&T for 10 years,” says Mock. He also highlights the operator’s own announcement to explain Ciena’s selection: “They talk about two technologies in particular – 100Gbps technology and Optical Transport Networking (OTN).”
Ovum argues in its “Telecoms in 2020: network infrastructure” report that the future prospects of specialist vendors will be as rosy as full-service ones. “We do view ourselves as specialists even though we’ve essentially doubled the size of the company, and there is absolutely a place for specialist companies as they are genuinely more agile,” says Mock.
Mock also expects further system vendor consolidation. “Optical transport remains fragmented so there are opportunities for further consolidation,” he says. Fragmented in what way? “If you look at the router space there are two dominant players, in optical transport there are 10 – no-one has a 40 to 50 percent market share.”
Infinera PICs 100Gbps coherent
Infinera is expediting its product plans, basing its optical transmission roadmap on coherent detection.
The company plans to launch a 100Gbps coherent transmission system in 2012. The design will be based on a pair of 5x100Gbps ultra-long-haul photonic integrated circuit (PIC) chips that will enable its systems to deliver 8 Terabits-per-second (Tbps) over a fibre.
“This change in roadmap is because of the successful development of our 100G coherent ASIC programme, and we have integrated five 100Gbps coherent channels onto one card.”
Drew Perkins, Infinera
Infinera also announced that it will be adding 40Gbps coherent detection to its DTN system in 2011. The 40Gbps will be based on optical modules and not its PIC technology. Using its planar technology and working with optical module suppliers to integrate its in-house coherent technology, Infinera’s DTN system will support 25GHz channel spacings to cram 160 lightpaths across the C-band, to deliver 6.4Tbps capacity.
Why is the announcement important?
Infinera had still to launch its 10x40Gbps PIC. This announcement marks a shift in Infinera’s strategy to focus on 100Gbps and gain a technology edge by offering the highest line speed at an unmatched density.
“It’s a good roadmap for Infinera,” says Jimmy Yu, a director at the Dell'Oro Group. “From an optical market perspective, I think 2012 is the right time for having a 100Gbps DWDM long-haul system. And it'll definitely be coherent.”
Dell’Oro expects to see early adopters of 100Gbps in 2010 and 2011, but it will be 2012/2013 when the market for 100Gbps will ramp.
What has motivated Infinera’s shift has been its success in developing coherent technology, says Drew Perkins, Infinera’s CTO. Coherent technology in combination with PICs is the best of all worlds, he says, marrying the two most significant optical developments of the last decade.
Perkins admits Infinera has been slow in offering 40Gbps technology.
“We are late to a very small market,” he says. “We think there is a 40G squeeze going on – it took the industry so long to get 40Gbps right with coherent technology such that 100Gbps is now just around the corner, as we are proving here.”
Yet Infinera will offer 40Gbps next year and will seek to differentiate itself with 25GHz channel spacing. “But it [the 40Gbps design] will be rapidly superseded by our 100Gbps, 8Tbps technology and then we believe we will be early to market with 100Gbps,” says Perkins.
Dell’Oro says 40Gbps is growing rapidly and it expects continued growing. “In 2009, 40Gbps wavelength shipments grew a little over 160 percent, and we’re forecasting it to grow nearly 90 percent in 2010,” says Yu. “If Infinera delivers 40Gbps on 25GHz channel spacing, it'll be a good interim step to 100Gbps.”
What’s being done?
Infinera has now scrapped its 10x40Gbps differential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK) PIC, going to a 5x100Gbps polarisation multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) design instead. Interestingly, Perkins says that the 10x40Gbps transmitter PIC was designed from the start to also support 5x100Gbps PM-QPSK modulation.
The challenge is designing the coherent receiver PIC which is significantly different, and has required Infinera to gain coherent expertise in-house.
The receiver PIC also requires a local oscillator laser. “We have integrated the laser onto the receiver PIC per channel,” says Perkins. Infinera’s PICs already use lasers that are tuned over a significant number of channels though not the whole C-band so this is using technology it already has.
Another key aspect of the coherent receiver is the associated electronics that comprises very high-speed A/D converters, a digital signal processor and most likely advanced forward error correction. Developing such an ASIC is a significant challenge.
Is Infinera developing such a design? Infinera points to its Ottawa, Ontario-based research facility that was announced in September last year. “That team is working on ASIC level coherent technology,” says Perkins. “This change in roadmap is because of the successful development of our 100G coherent ASIC programme, and we have integrated five 100Gbps coherent channels onto one card.”
Did Infinera consider designing a 10x100Gbps PIC? “It comes down to the size of the line card,” says Perkins. Infinera believes the resulting terabit line card would have been too large a jump for the industry given the status of associated electronics such as switching technology.
What next?
Infinera says that in 2012 it will ship systems based on its 100Gbps coherent PICs to customers but it is unwilling to detail the key development milestones involved between now and then.
As for future product developments, Infinera claims it can extend overall capacity of its coherent technology in several directions.
It says it can integrate 10, 100Gbps channels onto a PIC. “Somewhere in the future we undoubtedly will”, says Perkins. The company also states that in the “fullness of time” it could deliver 100Gbps over 25GHz channel spacings.
Perkins also reconfirmed that Infinera will continue to advance the modulation scheme used, going from QPSK to include higher order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes.
Optical core switching tops 4 Terabit-per-second.
Event:
Alcatel-Lucent has launched its 1870 Transport Tera Switch (TTS) that has a switch capacity of 4 Terabits-per-second (Tbps). The platform switches and grooms traffic at 1Gbps granularity while supporting lightpaths up to 100Gbps.
“It is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks, driven by video and the move to cloud computing among others,” says Alberto Valsecchi, vice president of marketing, optics activities at Alcatel-Lucent.
The 1870 TTS supports next-generation Optical Transport Network (OTN), carrier Ethernet and SONET/SDH protocols, as well as generalized multiprotocol label switching/ automatically switched optical network(GMPLS/ ASON) control plane technology to enable network management and traffic off-load between the IP core and optical layers.
"
It [the 1870 TTS] is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks"
Alberto Valsecchi, Alcatel-Lucent
Central to the 1870 TTS is an in-house-designed 1Tbps switch integrated circuit (IC). The switch chip is non-blocking and by switching at the OTN level supports all traffic types. The device is designed to limit power consumption and is claimed to consume 0.04 Watts per Gbps. Four such ICs are required to achieve the 4Tbps switch capacity.
Each platform line card has a 120Gbps capacity and supports 1, 2.5, 10 and 40Gbps interfaces with a 100Gbps interface planned. The line card’s optical transceiver interfaces include 12 XFPs or two CFP modules. Three 40Gbps interfaces will be supported in future and a 240Gbps line card is already being mentioned (Alcatel-Lucent describes the platform as ‘8Tbps hardware ready’).
The cards also use tunable XFP modules. The 1870 TTS can thus be used alongside existing optical platforms for long-haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transport or support its own links. “There is urgency for this [platform] to manage bandwidth in the central office,” says Michael Sedlick, head of cross-connect product line management at Alcatel-Lucent. “It can solve both requirements: working with installed based WDM platforms and enabling a more integrated implementation [using tunable XFPs].”
“It is already in trials and is selected by tier one service providers,” says Valsecchi.
Why is it important:
Gazettabyte asked three experts to give their views on the announcement. In particular, to position the 1870 TTS platform, discuss its significance, and the importance of GMPLS/ ASON support.
Ron Kline, principal analyst, network infrastructure at Ovum
The platform announcement is essentially about solving three key [service provider] dilemmas: scaling to meet the huge growth in traffic, working through the transition from SONET/SDH to Ethernet and driving efficiencies in the network through automation that helps reduce capital expenditure and operational expenditure.
The 1870 TTS is not a new class of platform but rather the next generation of bandwidth management systems that is using electrical OTN switching rather than STS-1 [SONET frame] switching.
Alcatel-Lucent’s existing 1850 packet optical transport system is really the next generation of aggregation (optical edge device/ multi-service provisioning platform) equipment. The difference is where the device goes in the network and the granularity of the switching.
For the 1870, you are switching bandwidth at wavelength rates (2.5G, 10G, 40G, etc.) There is also some sub-wavelength granularity as well. The device is protocol independent because client signals (SONET/SDH, Ethernet, video, etc) are all encapsulated in the OTN wrapper.
The most similar platforms are the Ciena 5400 introduced in September ’09 and Huawei’s OSN 8800. Tellabs also introduced a high-speed shelf for the 7100 that has a 1.2Tbps OTN matrix and ZTE has the ZXONE 8600 that it introduced in March ’09.
Momentum has been building for several years now. The current generation of optical core switches (Ciena's CoreDirector, Alcatel-Lucent's 1678 MCC, the Sycamore 16000) cannot scale large enough and are SONET/SDH based. The need is to be able to groom at the wavelength level. Current switch sizes (640Gbps, 1.2 Tbps for Sycamore) can’t scale so you have to place another switch and also use capacity to tie the switches together. The larger you grow the bigger the problem—you use 10% of capacity to tie two machines together, 20% to tie 3 together, etc.
In addition, older generation optical core switches are SONET/SDH-based and have trouble with Ethernet so they have to use the generic framing procedure/ virtual concatenation (GFP/VCAT) to manipulate the signal. When you move to OTN switching you don’t have to convert between protocols to switch through the matrix.
And yes, so far 4Tbps is the highest switch capacity per chassis.
As for the control plane, ASON automates configuration so it is more applicable for turning up and down bandwidth. In Alcatel-Lucent’s case, it is integrating the control planes across its product portfolio which gives visibility across the entire network. Although router offload is a key application for the device, you don’t necessarily need a control plane to do it.
IP routing is much more expensive (per bit) then wavelength switching. The idea is to switch at the lowest network layer possible. People have been using an inverted triangle with 4 layers to illustrate. IP routing is at the top followed by layer-2 switching, TDM/OTN switching and then wavelength switching.
Eve Griliches, managing partner, ACG Research
The 1870 TTS isn’t a new platform class but the platforms in general are new. Huawei, Fujitsu, Tellabs, Cisco and various others have platforms all geared towards this but most are missing some element today. In this case, Alacatel-Lucent is still missing the optical portion of the product [DWDM and ROADM].
The platform is starting out as a large OTN and packet switch which will eventually turn into a full packet optical transport product - that is my estimate. Each vendor is approaching this area differently, suffice to say, I think this is an OK and decent approach.
The GMPLS/ ASON control plane technology means the 1870 TTS can manage the optical and IP layers together. Some providers want that, some don't.
Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst, optical, Infonetics Research
The 1870 TTS is a lot like the 1850, just bigger. I suspect much of the new functionality in the 1870 will migrate down to the 1850.
It is significant as there are not that many boxes - none, really - that can do converged SDH/OTN/layer-2 switching all on one backplane. Several other vendors such as Ciena with its 5400, Cyan and Tellabs are going in this direction but Alcatel-Lucent has some legitimacy since it already was out with the 1850. Only the Fujitsu 9500 is in this class.
GMPLS/ ASON allow routers to communicate with the layer one infrastructure and set up and tear down paths as needed. It gives the router visibility into the lower layers of the OSI stack.
I think the key point is really the 1870 TTS’s 4Tbps switch capacity. This box represents the cutting edge of converged layer-1 plus layer-2 packet optical transport system technology.
Now we will see whether carriers adopt this architecture or whether they use IP over WDM or OTN switching only.
The Alcatel-Lucent 1870 TSS: the two central cards, larger than a shelf, each contain four 1Tbps universal switch ICs. There are two cards per platform as one is used for redundancy.
Jagdeep Singh's Infinera effect
Talking to gazettabyte, he reflects on the ups and downs of being a CEO, his love of running, 40 Gigabit transmission and why he is looking forward to his next role at Infinera.
"We are looking to lead the 40 Gig market, not be first to market.”
Jagdeep Singh, Infinera CEO
Ask Jagdeep Singh about how Infinera came about and there is no mistaking the enthusiasm and excitement in his voice.
During the bubble era of 2000 he started to question whether the push to all-optical networking pursued by numerous start-ups made sense. “The reason for these all-optical device companies was that they were developing the analogue functions needed,” says Singh. “Yet what operators really wanted was access to the [digital] bits.”
This led him to think about optical-to-electrical (O-E) conversion and the digital processing of signals to correct for transmission impairments. “The question then was: could this be done in a low-cost way?” says Singh. Achieving O-E conversion would also allow access to the bits for add/ drop, switching and grooming functions at the sub-wavelength level before using inverse electrical-to-optical (E-O) conversion to continue the optical transmission.
“We came at this from an orthogonal direction: building lower-cost O-E-O. Was it possible?” says Singh. “The answer was that most of the cost was in the packaging and that led us to think about photonic integration.”
Singh started out with his colleague Drew Perkins (now Infinera’s CTO) with whom he co-founded Lightera, a company acquired by Ciena in 1999. Then the two met with Dave Welch at a Christmas party in 2000. Welch had been CTO of SDL, a company just acquired by JDS Uniphase. “It was clear that he was not that happy and there were a lot of VCs (venture capitalists) chasing him,” says Singh. “He (Welch) recognised the power of what we were planning.” In January 2001 the three founded Infinera.
So why is he stepping down as CEO? The answer is to focus on long-term strategy. And perhaps to reclaim time outside work, given he has a young family.
He may even have more time for running.
Singh typically runs at least two marathons a year. “As a CEO your schedule is fully booked. There is so much stuff there is no time to think.” Running for him is quiet time. “I can get out and recharge the batteries. I find it invaluable. I can process things and it keeps the stress levels down.”
Being CEO
“There are two roles to being a CEO: running the business – the P&Ls (profit and loss statements), financials, sales – all real-time and urgent; and then there is the second part – setting the product vision: what products will be needed in two, three, four years’ time?” he says.
This second part is particularly important for Infinera given it develops products around its photonic integrated circuit (PIC) designs, requiring a longer development cycle than other optical equipment makers. “We have to get the requirements right up front,” says Singh.
And it is this part of the CEO’s role, he says, that gets trumped due to real-time tasks that must be addressed. Thus, from January, Singh will become Infinera’s executive chairman focussing exclusively on product planning. “If I had to choose [between the two roles], the longer term stuff is more appealing,” he says.
Looking back over his period as CEO, he believes his biggest achievement has been the team assembled at Infinera. “What I’ve learnt over the years is that the quality of success depends on the quality of the team.
“We started after the telecom bust,” says Singh. “There were world-class people that were never that locked in and [once on board] they knew people that they respected.” Now Infinera has a staff of 1,000, and had gone from a start-up to a publicly-listed company.
One downside of becoming a large company is that Singh regrets no longer personally knowing all his staff. “What I miss is that I knew everyone, I was part of a small team with a lot of energy,” he says. Another change is all the regulatory, legal and accounting that a public company must do. “I was also free to do and say what I wanted. Now I have to be a lot more careful.”
The Infinera effect
Asked about why Infinera is still not shipping a PIC with 40Gbps line rate channels, it is Singh-as-scrutinised-CEO that kicks in. “If we built 40 Gig purely using off-the-shelf components we’d have a product.” But he argues that the economics of 40 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) are still not compelling. According to market research firm Ovum, he says, it will only be 2012 when 40Gbps dips below four times the cost of 10Gbps.
Indeed in Q3 2009 shipments of 40Gbps slipped. According to Ovum, this was in part due to what it calls the “Infinera effect” that is lowering the cost of existing 10Gbps technology. Only when 40Gbps is around 2.5x the cost of 10Gbps that it is likely to take off; the economic rule-of-thumb with all previous optical speed hikes.
“Our goal is to come in with a 40 Gig solution that is economically viable,” says Singh. This is what Infinera is working on with its 10x40Gbps PIC pair of chips that integrate hundreds of optical functions. “With the PIC we are looking to lead the 40 Gig market, not be first to market.”
This year also saw Infinera introduce its second class of platform, the ATN, aimed at metro networks. The platform was developed across three Infinera sites: in Silicon Valley, India and China.
Coupled with Infinera’s DTN, the ATN allows end-to-end bandwidth management of its systems. “Until now we have only played in long-haul; this now doubles the market we play in,” says Infinera's CEO. Italian operator Tiscali announced in December 2009 its plan to deploy Infinera’s systems with the ATN being deployed in 80 metro locations.
How are cheap wavelength-selective switches and tunability impacting Infinera’s business? Singh bats away the question: “We just don’t see it in our space.”
Singh agrees with Infinera’s Dave Welch’s thesis that PICs are optics’ current disruption. What developments can he cite that will indicate this is indeed happening?
There are several examples that would confirm this, he says: “PICs in adjacent devices such as routers or switches; you would need something like a PIC to reduce the power and space of such platforms.” Other areas of adoption include connecting multiple bays such as required for the largest IP core routers, and even chip-to-chip interconnect.
Surely chip-to-chip is silicon photonics not Infinera’s PICs’ based on indium phosphide technology? Is silicon photonics of interest to Infinera?
"We are an optical transport company. To generate light over vast distances requires indium phosphide,” says Singh. “But if and when there is a breakthrough in silicon to generate light efficiently, we’d want to take advantage of that.”
One wonders what ideas Singh will come up with on his two-hour runs once he can think beyond the next financial quarter.