Oclaro Inc of San Jose, CA, USA (which provides components, modules and subsystems for optical communications) is sampling a 100G QSFP28 client-side transceiver that meets both the CWDM4 MSA and CLR4 Alliance optical interface specifications, as well as the IEEE 802.3bm CAUI-4 electrical interface specification.
Featuring low power consumption of 3.5W and what is claimed to be high transmission performance quality through the use of Oclaro's internal uncooled 1310nm 28Gbps directly modulated laser (DML) technology, the new QSFP28 client-side transceiver is suitable for 100G interconnections between data-center switches in addition to interfaces in high-end routers and packet-optical transport systems.
"The key to our success in the 100G pluggable transceiver market has been our proprietary indium phosphide laser technology," says Yves LeMaitre, president of Oclaro's Optical Connectivity Business. "With our new QSFP28 100G transceiver, mega-scale data-center operators will be able to transition from 40G to 100G on their existing single-mode fiber infrastructure without significantly expanding footprint, cost or power consumption."
Data-center architectures have evolved from shorter-reach multi-mode fiber links to longer-reach single-mode fiber interconnections between switches typically running at 10G or 40G, says Oclaro. Until recently, the only 100G standard specified by the IEEE for single-mode fiber links has been the 100GBASE-LR4 standard for 10km reach based on WDM wavelengths that require temperature-stabilized lasers even though many links only need reaches up to 2km. To address these issues, the CWDM4 MSA developed a new interface standard based on CWDM wavelengths, which removes the requirement for a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) and allows for a low-cost design at low power consumption. At the same time, a group of companies also formed a new CLR4 Alliance to generate an open, multi-vendor specification, and this group established and released a specification similar to the CWDM4 standard. Because this new standard did not require forward error correction (FEC), which can sometimes cause latency issues, it was much more desirable for applications such as high-performance computing, computer clustering and high-speed trading that cannot tolerate latency. Oclaro is a founding member of both the CWDM4 and CLR4 MSA, and, with its new 100G QSFP28 transceiver, Oclaro can now support both of these standards with a single design that offers low power consumption, low cost and high-quality transmission performance.
Features of the 100G QSFP28 transceiver include:
Oclaro's proprietary uncooled 1310nm 28Gbps DML, enabling both CWDM4 and CLR4 specifications for low power consumption without compromising transmission performance; Based on cost-effective design leveraging Oclaro's manufacturing experience, gained as the market leading supplier of single-mode 100G client-side transceivers; Ability to operate without forward error correction (FEC) protocol on host card to deliver lower end-to-end latency.
The 100G QSFP28 transceiver is sampling now to customers. Production is expected to ramp gradually throughout 2016 with the introduction of 100G single-mode solutions inside data centers.
