OIF Approves 25 Gbps Common Electrical Interface IA

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) members approved the Common Electrical I/O (CEI) 3.0 implementation agreement (IA), which defines electrical layer interfaces with signaling rates up to 28 Gbaud/s for next generation systems and are the next evolutionary step beyond the existing CEI IA which addressed signaling rates up to 11.2 Gbaud/s.


The CEI 3.0 electrical layers form the basis of future protocol interfaces developed by the OIF, and were developed in conjunction with the OIF's efforts to address 100 Gbaud/s networks.


“The CEI work is important to the networking industry because it paves the way to second generation 100G systems and even beyond,�? said Klaus-Holger Otto, of Alcatel-Lucent and the OIF's Technical Committee vice chair and CEI author. “Moving forward, these IAs will help to drastically reduce power and increase density of the system internal interconnects and therefore open the way for even higher integrated transmission systems in the near future.�?


CEI 3.0 defines electrical specifications for up to 28 Gbaud/s signaling for chip-to-chip applications and 25 Gbaud/s signaling for backplane applications. The CEI-28G-SR clause supports chip-to-chip interfaces up to 300 mm with one connector. The CEI-25G-LR clause supports backplane interfaces up to 680 mm with two connectors. The CEI-25 project builds on the legacy of previous generations of the CEI effort, which provided electrical signaling solutions in the 5-6 Gbaud/s and 10-11 Gbaud/s ranges. http://www.oiforum.com