At the Supercomputing 2013 (SC13) event in Denver, Colorado (18-21 November), fiber-optic communications component and subsystem maker Finisar, of Sunnyvale, CA, USA introduced a broadened portfolio of products for supercomputing interconnects. Utilizing 10G, 14G, and 25G building blocks common across the portfolio and leveraging Finisar’s expertise in high-performance optics technology, the products support a wide variety of protocols, including InfiniBand, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SAS and PCIe.
Finisar’s 25G-enabled products include enhancements to the established Quadwire and C.wire active optical cables (AOCs), board-mounted optical assemblies (BOA) and QSFP28 transceivers. These support the latest InfiniBand EDR and 100G Ethernet protocols, enabling the fastest applications in HPC today, it is claimed. The 10G/14G-enabled products include SFPwire, Quadwire, and C.wire active optical cables, as well as SFP+, QSFP+ and CXP transceivers. These are designed for InfiniBand QDR/FDR, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SAS, and PCIe protocols.
The products use Finisar's core technology components including vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), photodiodes, and ICs. Leveraging a common set of building blocks shortens development times and improves manufacturing efficiency, says the firm. Finisar adds that its active optical cables offer a lightweight, more compact solution than traditional copper cables.
During SC13, Finisar demonstrated its suite of 25G building blocks in an optical engine form factor (the firm’s 25G board-mounted optical assembly). The BOA provides low power and what is claimed to be the highest-density optical interface for supercomputing interconnects. The live demonstration showed a 25G BOA connected to a second 25G BOA with integrated CDRs (clock data recovery) on both transmit and receive channels. Finisar’s BOA features what is claimed to be the world's fastest VCSEL (previously shown to work at speeds up to 56Gbps). The BOA is currently sampling and is expected to be in full production in early 2014.
