Fujitsu Labs and Furukawa Develop 50 Tbps Optical Interconnect

Fujitsu Laboratories and Furukawa Electric Co. disclosed the joint development of an optical interconnect technology that increases the density of fiber-optic lines connecting to a system backplane while enabling high-bandwidth internal communications at speeds of 50 terabits per second (Tbps), ten times faster than is possible with today's copper lines.


Conventional interconnects pass electrical signals over copper wires, making it difficult to generate transmission speeds of 10-25Gbps because simply increasing the number of copper lines leads to problems of waveform degradation and signal interference. Optical fiber has excellent characteristics but the limited space inside servers has made it difficult to accommodate a large number of fiber-optic lines, according to the companies.


The approach adopted by Fujitsu Laboratories and Furukawa Electric is to use thin, highly flexible optic fibers, along with high-density optical connectors made possible with multiple lanes, allows for line capacity to be increased from the existing figure of 500 lines to 2,000 lines. The prototype optical midplane carries 25Gbps on each of these lines for a total capacity of 50Tbps. http://www.fujitsu.com/