At the Optical Fiber Communication conference & exposition (OFC 2014) in San Francisco (11-13 March), M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc of Lowell, MA, USA (which makes semiconductors, components and subassemblies for analog, RF, microwave and millimeter-wave applications) and Avago Technologies Ltd of San Jose, CA, USA and Singapore (a designer and supplier of III-V-based analog components for communications, industrial and consumer applications) are giving a collaborative demonstration of a high-density 10Gbps Ethernet optoelectronic switching solution targeting enterprise and data-center applications. The demonstration will showcase 12-channel 10Gbps traffic running over a 100m optical fiber cable switched through a 48-port low-latency cross-point device.
With rapid growth of data centers and a need for low-latency data-center configurability at the circuit level, a combination of MACOM’s cross-point switches and signal conditioners combined with Avago’s optical transceivers delivers high-density and low-latency optoelectronic switching with signal regeneration and monitoring capabilities. MACOM has developed a portfolio of high-port-count cross-point switches and signal conditioners to address this need. The demonstration is achieved using MACOM’s M31517 multi-port signal conditioner and M21048 48x48 11.88Gb/s cross-point switch and Avago’s Micro POD 120G transmitter and receiver modules as well as 100m optical fiber cable.
“Increasing physical size of data centers combined with increasing support for cloud computing applications drives the need for long-reach optical connectivity and low-latency circuit switching,” says MACOM’s director of marketing Marek Tlalka. “The combination of Avago’s optical transceivers with MACOM’s cross-point switches enables this capability as a complement to traditional packet switching solutions,” he adds.
“As the size of data centers increases, we expect these embedded parallel optic modules as well as Avago’s pluggable modules to continue to play an important role in data centers,” says Sharon Hall, segment marketing manager for Fiber Optics Product Division at Avago. “The MicroPOD is an ideal low-power, small-form-factor device which can be leveraged across many switching platforms, enabling high-density 10Gbps Ethernet links.”
MACOM’s M21048 and M31517 devices are available now. Avago’s MicroPOD and MiniPOD optical modules are in volume production. The devices are on display in MACOM’s demonstration room (#631) during OFC.
