AOCs (Part 2)

Summary of a few more AOC Implementations:

Avago Technologies had a late entry into the AOC market with its 10GBASE-CX4 replacement and QSFP+ products. But they have a rich history in parallel optics so have quickly come up to speed their products. While they may have been somewhat late to market, Avago has an existing customer base to peddle its wares to.

Finisar’s products include Quadwire and Cwire AOCs to address early adoption of 40G and 100G. Quadwire is Finisar’s mainstream product, both in terms of its use of the VCSEL arrays the company produces in volume at its Texas fab, and in terms of its use of the popular QSFP form factor.

The high end of the Finisar product line is designed to exploit anticipated interest in 100G Ethernet and 12-channel QDR InfiniBand. Cwire offers an aggregate data rate of 150 Gbps and a CXP interface. Not only does this represent the direction of high-end enterprise cluster design, but it allows Finisar to utilize the most integrated VCSEL arrays it manufactures. The 12-channel array also represents the most cost-effective per-laser manufacturing option, allowing Finisar to take advantage of its expertise in designing large VCSEL-arrays. The benefit in high channel count can also be seen in power dissipation. While the single serial channel of Laserwire dissipates 500mW per end, the 12-channel Cwire dissipates less than 3W per end – half the power dissipation per channel.

MergeOptics (now part of FCI) was born of the old Infineon which was once a powerhouse in the optical transceiver markets—both telecom and datacom. It emerged in 2006 with its SFP and then SFP+ products and is now one of the first entrants for 40G and 100G AOCs. Unlike most of its competitors, it is focused on 10G and above products so can bring them to market rather quickly. Its technology is being leveraged for InfiniBand and Ethernet applications.

Stay tuned for the next post for just a little more on AOCs.

Optical Engines

I was reviewing some research I recently conducted for the Optical Interconnect report I wrote for CIR and realized that I hadn’t yet “blogged” about what I would consider some exciting new product directions that many optical components suppliers are taking. We’ve been talking about optical integration for many years and some companies, like Infinera, have actually implemented it into their real-world products. But there are more cases of this than ever before and I think we’re on the brink of some true industry breakthroughs using what many have deemed “optical engines.”

Here is a summary of the component companies and their associated optical engine products:

• BinOptics – it uses its InP PICs to build "custom integrated microphotonics solutions" for its customers
• ColorChip – its silicon photonics is at the center of its 40G QSFP modules
• Lightwire – its Opto-electronic Application Specific Integrated Subsystem (OASIS) promises low power and higher density
• MergeOptics/FCI – OptoPack is at the center of its 10G and above transceiver designs
• Reflex Photonics – LightAble is the building block for its transceiver modules
• Santur – DFB/waveguide architecture has promise for not only tunable lasers, but many different optical interconnects

So what’s the big deal? In the past, optical integration was a science project looking for an application. Now, these companies are leveraging their research to create products such as QSFP modules or tunable transceivers that are selling today. So even though you could make these transceivers tiny, they package them in standard form factors in order to develop a revenue stream in hopes that the technology can truly be used for miniature devices in the near future. Pretty smart business plan I think – especially since we’ve already seen a glimpse of the miniaturization products with Avago’s MicroPOD, Intel’s Light Peak and Luxtera’s OptoPhy, which can also be considered optical engines. And, which are supposedly on the cusp of true adoption into active equipment.