High-speed optical networking shown at ECOC

23 October 2013 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

Among the highlights at this year’s ECOC (European Conference on Optical Communications) in London were demonstrations of two high-speed data transmission systems over optical cabling.

External box-to-box PCI Express connectivity

PLX Technology and FCI demonstrated the use of FCI’s new mini-SAS high-density (MSHD) active optical cable (AOC) to provide 32 Gbps (PCIe Gen3, x4) optical connectivity in a small-form-factor solution. The demonstration highlighted how a PLX PCIe switch card connects to a PLX five-bay PCIe expansion card through the use of a standard MSHD connector and FCI’s new MSHD AOC.

The expansion card allows any devices connected (such as PCIe adaptors, solid-state drives and NIC cards) to interact with the main motherboard/server as if it were a device installed inside the chassis. The demonstration platform can be used by those interested in developing system solutions for PCIe over non-standard PCIe cabling.

FCI’s new MSHD AOC is the next-generation SAS-based storage I/O system that allows for the signal transmission of both SAS 2.1 (6 Gbps per channel) and the proposed SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps per channel) industry standard protocols. This increases linear board density while doubling the maximum per-port aggregate bandwidth. These attributes enable accelerated access and transfer of data within systems.

CFP4 transceiver

Finisar demonstrated several new technologies for high-speed optical networking applications, including the industry’s first 100GE-SR4 CFP4 optical transceiver, capable of carrier-grade transmission over fibre links up to 100 metres.

This demonstration constituted the world’s first public demonstration of a working module in the new CFP4 MSA form factor. The versatile CFP4 almost doubles the 100G Ethernet port density of CFP2 modules, enabling up to 3,6 Tbps per host board while supporting several optical interfaces, including 100G-SR4, 100G-LR4, 100G-SR10 and 10x10GE breakout applications.

The demonstration showed two 100G Ethernet CFP4 optical modules interoperating error-free over multimode fibre with a maximum power dissipation of only 3,5 W (3 W typical). The module uses a 4x25G VCSEL array architecture, as defined in the emerging 100GBASE-SR4 IEEE standard. The module also supports OTU4 applications (i.e., 4x28G multimode) and will begin shipping to customers in the near future.

For more information contact Arnold Perumal, Avnet Kopp, +27 (0)11 319 8600, [email protected], www.avnet.co.za

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