Infinera unveiled two photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for new optical transport systems and line cards scheduled for delivery later this year. The introductions include a sliceable, enhanced PIC, ePIC-500, and an application-optimized PIC, oPIC-100.
Infinera said its new sliceable photonics technology enables the large pool of capacity in a PIC to be divided at a granular optical level. Each slice can routed in a different direction as it exits the line card or the system housing, usually at the hub. The recipient of the individual slice is a line card or system that matches the capacity, usually at the spoke. For instance, a 500G superchannel originating at a hub location could be sliced into 100G chunks for delivery to multiple spokes.
The new ePIC-500 provides sliceable 500G capacity at the hub location, while the new oPIC-100 provides 100G capacity at the spoke location. While these two new PICs are applicable across all network locations they were developed specifically to support Layer T in the metro.
The introductions come as Infinera positions for a major transformation in network architecture driven by scale and virtualization. Infinera sees the emergence of two layers:
- Layer C -- a cloud services layer that supports NFV plus other Cloud delivered services
- Layer T -- the transport layer, which is founded on scalable photonics capable of delivering more capacity per line card and system while simplifying the network.
The company said it has modeled a wide range of applications from metro aggregation to regional long-haul where hub-and-spoke, mesh or ring topologies are common. When using the new PICs, these models showed an estimated average reduction of 28 percent in modules, 31 percent in power and 45 percent in bandwidth inefficiencies as compared to conventional, commercial off the shelf technologies that deliver single-wavelength or super-channel solutions for 100G, 200G or 400G.
“Infinera has been shipping PICs in transport systems, that have been designed from the ground-up, for over a decade," said Dave Welch, co-founder and president at Infinera. "During this time the technology has surpassed over 1.5 billion hours of field operations. Sliceable photonics allows our customers to build networks with scale and flexibility for a wide variety of applications ranging from the metro to the long-haul. It provides a comprehensive tool set for us to be nimble and build market-specific platforms for Layer T as our customers’ needs continue to evolve."
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