Wednesday, September 4, 2019

CIG demos 200G FR4 optical module for DCI

Cambridge Industries Group (CIG) will demonstrate a 200G FR4 optical module at this week's CIOE 2019 exhibition in Shenzhen, China. The module is fully compliant with Open Eye MSA specifications and interoperable with multiple vendors’ products including DSP based 200G optical modules.

“This live demonstration of our new analog CDR based 200G FR4 module, in addition to our DSP-based modules, reaffirms our commitment to bring low cost and low power technologies to the industry,” said Gerry Wong, CEO of CIG. “CIG is the first in the world to introduce this product into the datacenter interconnect market, and together with our large scale, high quality automated manufacturing capabilities, we are capable of quickly meeting the needs of the DCI market.”

The module adopts 50Gbps PAM-4 format and advanced technologies in analog clock and data recovery (CDR) chipsets. This enables lower cost, lower power, and lower latency compared to DSP-based modules. Low latency is especially important because mission critical applications such as real-time application or high- frequency trading require very low latency transmission.

CIG said it is applying its expertise and leadership in optical module design and manufacturing for 25Gbps, 100Gbps and 400Gbps products into these new 200Gbps modules targeted for datacenter applications. The product is in the early sampling stage with general availability (GA) expected in early 2020.