Avago Technologies says it has joined fiber infrastructure and cabling vendors to solve significant interconnect challenges in ever-growing data centers, especially for modern mega data centers that demand higher data rates over an extended link distance. The joint solutions enable data centers and enterprise networks to transition from 10G to 40G Ethernet while warranting a 400m link distance per IEEE 10G Ethernet standards and a 550m link distance with the vendors’ optical cabling solutions.
At the Optical Fiber Communication/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC 2013) in Anaheim, CA, USA (19-21 March), Avago gave a joint demonstration of its new 40GbE QSFP+ eSR4 transceiver using multimode fiber cables from Corning Inc, Panduit Corp and Commscope Inc, involving live traffic stream of 40GbE Layer 2 data transmitted over various 550m fiber cables from participating vendors. “Together with our strategic fiber cabling vendors, we are now able to support a link distance beyond 500m,” says Philip Gadd, VP & general manager of Avago’s Fiber Optics Product Division.
“We have worked closely with the Avago team to test a wide array of our fiber-optic cables with their parallel-optic transceivers,” says Stuart Hoiness, senior VP, Enterprise Networks for Corning Cable Systems. “We have validated the link distance of our Corning ClearCurve OM4 optical fiber up to 550m using Avago’s 40G QSFP+ eSR4 multimode transceiver,” he adds.
“With Panduit’s Signature Core Fiber Optic Cabling System, the transmission reach has been measured beyond 550m using Avago’s 40G QSFP+ eSR4 multimode transceiver,” says Dennis Renaud, VP of DataComm Products at Panduit. “We will certify links out to 550m when using Signature Core and Avago’s 40G QSFP+ eSR4 modules,” he adds.
“Link distance is a major challenge for IT managers dealing with data-center expansion,” notes George Brooks, senior VP of Enterprise Product and Market Management at CommScope. “Now they can reach 550m while protecting up to approximately 50% of their investments on fiber cabling infrastructure by deploying our SYSTIMAX InstaPATCH 360 fiber solution along with Avago’s 40G eSR4 multimode transceiver.”
At the OFC/NFOEC Workshop on ‘How Can Optics Address Bandwidth and Latency Bottlenecks in Data Centers?’, Dr Mitchell Fields, director of product strategy at of Avago’s Fiber Optics Product Division, gave a presentation describing technology concepts associated with the future of optical interconnects for data centers.
