Webinar: Exploring PAM4 SR data center interconnects

Join us on Sep 15, 2021 10:00 AM in Pacific Time

Many standards use Pulse-Amplitude Modulation 4-Level (PAM4) Short Reach coding scheme, including for 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps interfaces within the data center. Some vendors have implemented DSP in their optical devices to handle noise impairments. To reduce cost and power consumption, others have developed PAM4 AOC (active optical cables) and SR modules using analog CDR technology. With the transition to 400G Ethernet in full swing, and 800G around the corner, unique challenges are presented which will be discussed during this webinar.

This 60-minute webinar will explore PAM4 interconnect approaches. We will hear from Dr. Yung Son, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Optomind, which offers an advanced optical engine technology for enabling 400G QSFP56-DD AOC and SR8 optical transceivers with analog CDR. We will also hear from Kees Propstra, Vice President of Marketing at MultiLane, a leading provider of High-Speed IO and Data Center Interconnect test solutions. Kees has a Master of Science in physics and a post-graduate degree in modern optics from the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

Hosted by Jim Carroll, Optical Networks Daily

Presented by Consortium for On-Board Optics

Sponsored by the DuPont Silicon Valley Innovation Center

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oRgBBEArQkKAJWwaYKjxOQ

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Spectra7 and MultiLane demo 112Gbps PAM4 Active Copper Cable

Spectra7 Microsystems and MultiLane will be demonstrating Spectra7's new 112G PAM4 GaugeChanger chip intended for next generation 800Gbps data center interconnects at this year's annual China International Optoelectronic Expo (CIOE) 2021 show at the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center in Shenzhen from September 16-18.

As the industry moves to 800Gbps it will adopt 112Gbps PAM4 per lane signaling over 8 lanes. At these ultra-high signal rates, traditional passive copper cables will struggle to reach beyond 1.5 meters. This creates a huge problem for Hyperscalers that require longer lengths to serve both switch-to-switch and switch-to-server connections, but do not want to incur the power and cost penalty of optics. 

ACCs enabled with Spectra7's GC1122 solution will extend copper cable reach 2.5 times, up to 4 meters at a fraction of the cost of optics while consuming only 200mW of power per channel, which is up to 12 times lower power than optical solutions.

The GC1122 is the latest addition to Spectra7's GaugeChanger product line and extends the data rate from 56Gbps PAM4 to 112Gbps PAM4 per lane. Since the GC1122 is analog and highly linear, dynamics such as line rate adjustment, multi-level signaling, intermittent line silence, transmit pre-emphasis or amplitude adjustment and receiver adaptivity are fully preserved. The GC1122 is packaged in an ultra-small 2.7mm x 4.2mm chip scale package making it easily embeddable in even the smallest of connectors.

The CIOE demonstration highlights Spectra7's new GC1122 device as well as MultiLane's latest high speed test equipment including the ML4015D DSO and the ML4079E 800G BERT.

"Spectra7's new GC1122 is set to fill a big need in the data center interconnect market," said MultiLane CEO Fadi Daou. "We are delighted to be working with Spectra7 and their cable partners as they anticipate bringing their 112Gbps products to mass production in 2022."

"We are seeing tremendous interest from every Hyperscaler to get sample 800Gbps cables that are enabled by our new GC1122 solution", said Spectra7 CEO Raouf Halim. "Both we and our cable partners believe that 800Gbps will represent a significant acceleration in the growth and adoption of our ACC data center interconnect technology."

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GÉANT Research & Education Network tests Infinera's 800G

GÉANT, Europe’s leading collaboration on network and related infrastructure and services for research and education, completed a live network trial of 800G transmission on its pan-European production network using Infinera's ICE6 800G coherent technology on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform.

“Infinera’s ICE6 800G coherent solution demonstrated superior performance in increasing optical reach and capacity, demonstrating its ability to help us accelerate service for the research and education community to meet their critical needs. This trial clearly shows the value of Infinera’s innovative technology, and we are pleased to trial this technology with a trusted partner,” said Bram Peeters, Chief Network Operations Officer, GÉANT.

“GÉANT is a leader in developing collaboration services that facilitate important international cooperation between researchers and educators, and deploying the latest technology to stay at the forefront of this is critical to their organization,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Infinera. “The demonstration with Infinera’s ICE6 800G solution proves that the industry’s latest technology can seamlessly power GÉANT’s network with high-performance and high-capacity services, significantly enhancing their overall network.”

https://www.geant.org/

http://www.infinera.com

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Amphenol demos 112Gb/s interconnect with eTopus

Amphenol and eTopus Technology announced a high-speed backplane connector based on 112Gb/s four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) technology.

"ExaMAX2 has been proven in many designs as a reliable solution for 112G speed application," said David Jiang, Amphenol Global Product Manager for ExaMAX and ExaMEZZ. "We are very happy to work with eTopus and present this end-to-end demonstration to our customers. All selected ExaMAX2 parts are high-volume-production-ready. We are so proud that Amphenol is the first company that can provide multiple production-ready 112G high speed backplane connector solutions based on customer performance and cost requirements."

"We are excited to work with an industry interconnect leader like Amphenol and validate their ExaMax2 connector and 1 meter copper cable with our 112Gb/s SerDes IP. This end-to-end demonstration provides a clear upgrade path for modular platforms to double the line card bandwidth from 12.8Tb/s to 25.6Tb/s with electrical signaling and their chassis dimension," said Harry Chan, CEO of eTopus. "We are exceptionally pleased with the low bit error rates with no channel impairment concern when utilizing the new Amphenol connector with our latest 112G ePHY SerDes. Robust and reliable connections are critical to broad deployment of 112G copper connectivity."

http://www.eTopus.com

https://www.amphenol.com/

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Viavi announces 800G QSFP-DD pluggable module test solution

Viavi Solutions announced support for QSFP-DD800 testing, accelerating the production of 800G network infrastructure. The VIAVI ONT XPM is the first lab validation system to offer support for both OSFP800 and QSFP-DD800 modules.

Viavi said its ONT XPM module is the industry's first fully-integrated test product for pluggable 800G transponders based on 100G electrical lane speed. The solution provides full coverage for both framed and unframed traffic generation and analysis. In addition to support for the Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) 800G specification, the ONT XPM module also offers unique applications like TraCol, forward error correction (FEC) analysis and dynamic skew, specifically focused on the challenges of debugging the 100G PAM-4 electrical lanes used in 800G equipment and infrastructure.

"The VIAVI ONT Optical Network Tester is the established industry reference for pluggable optical module development, validation and test," said Tom Fawcett, Vice President and General Manager, Lab and Production Business Unit, VIAVI. "With support for QSFP-DD800 modules, we are further solidifying our customers' ability to accelerate their manufacturing operations to ensure they are first to bring new 800G network equipment to market."

https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/news-releases/viavi-augments-ont-800-xpm-modules-speed-800g-products-market

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Nokia supplies optical transport for NL-ix

NL-ix, Europe’s largest distributed internet exchange, selected Nokia to provide metro access and backbone transport for all NL-ix customer traffic across Europe. 

Specifically, Nokia will supply its optical transport solutions to provide a new optical layer over NL-ix’s meshed interconnection fabric to enable seamless capacity growth link scaling. The new network will support client services from 1 Gbps to 400 Gbps. The deployment includes the Nokia 1830 PSS (Photonic Service Switch) and the Nokia PSI-M (Photonic Service Interconnect – Modular) family of WDM/OTN platforms, powered by its PSE-3s (Photonic Service Engine) coherent DSP technology.

Jan Paul Dekker, CTO at NL-ix, said: “This strategic partnership with Nokia highlights NL-ix’s commitment to delivering even higher capacity pan-European optical links between our POPs in the Netherlands and beyond. The modularity of Nokia’s next-generation optical transport solutions enables us to adapt and respond quickly to market demand and provide an even better quality of service and connectivity experiences for our customers. Nokia is a proven and trusted partner and is our preferred choice to transform our European optical backbone network.”

Mark Vanderhaegen, Director of Webscale Accounts at Nokia, said: “NL-ix is growing fast and attracting new members to become one of the largest internet exchanges in the world. The growth in international interconnection needs of its customers means that NL-ix requires higher capacity links between its European locations. Nokia is proud to have been chosen to provide its market-leading WDM/OTN technology and solutions to upgrade NL-ix’s optical transport network.”

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Juniper enhances its AI-driven enterprise portfolio

Juniper Networks announced enhancements to the Juniper Mist cloud and AI engine, which include EVPN-VXLAN campus fabric management and additional Marvis Actions for proactive problem remediation. The new features within the AI-driven enterprise portfolio that enable customers to scale and simplify the rollout of their campus wired and wireless networks while bringing greater insight and automation to network operators.

The latest additions to Juniper’s AI-driven enterprise include:

AI-driven campus fabric management via the Juniper Mist Cloud: By enabling EVPN-VXLAN campus fabric management via the Juniper Mist Wired Assurance cloud service, Juniper offers the ability to simplify wired, wireless and WAN via a common cloud and AIOps engine. Juniper EVPN-VXLAN fabric leverages the same Juniper platform used to manage wired access in the campus, Juniper Mist Wired Assurance and the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA), bringing IT administrators unparalleled automation, insight and troubleshooting. The Juniper Mist Cloud empowers administrators to choose a topology, define networks of interest, identify required physical connections and apply the correct underlying policies in a seamless fashion. In addition, the Juniper Mist solution enables customers to leverage a common operational schema across LAN, WLAN and WAN environments, a key part of the Juniper client-to-cloud differentiation.

New Marvis Actions that provide deeper insight for faster problem remediation: Marvis Actions takes insight derived from the Mist AI engine, such as the root cause of a problem, and delivers actionable recommendations for IT managers via a simple dashboard. Additional actions have been added to the Marvis VNA software subscription to detect and correct even more wired/wireless/WAN issues, such as persistently failing wired/wireless clients, bad cables, access point (AP) coverage holes, bad WAN links and insufficient RF capacity, among others.

“Juniper is committed to Experience-First Networking, where our enterprise solutions leverage proactive automation, assured user experiences, agile cloud services and connected security to deliver the best end-user and operator experiences from client-to-cloud,” said Jeff Aaron, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at Juniper. “In the campus and branch, this means leveraging AIOps, driven by Mist AI and the cloud to maximize user productivity and efficiency while minimizing IT costs through simplified operations and prescriptive insights. Today, we are excited to accelerate in these areas – and further distance ourselves from the competition – with new enhancements to our Juniper Mist Wired Assurance, Wireless Assurance and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) cloud services that make it even easier to deploy, operate and troubleshoot campus networks at scale.”

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DISH picks IBM Global Business Services to automate its 5G architecture

DISH Network Corporation has engaged IBM Global Business Services to help automate its greenfield cloud-native 5G network. 

Specifically, DISH will leverage IBM's AI-powered automation and network orchestration software and services to bring broad 5G network orchestration to DISH's business and operations platforms. Intent-driven orchestration, a software-powered automation process, and artificial intelligence (AI) will be utilized to drive the operations of DISH's cloud-native 5G network architecture.

The IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation software delivers intent-based orchestration functionality to stitch hardware and software resources. This will help DISH make network slicing possible and accelerate the creation and delivery of new services. Network slices – individual pieces that comprise said network – will be managed by customers to set service levels for each device appropriate to their use of the network. For example, an autonomous vehicle can be supported by very low latency while an HD video camera can be allocated high bandwidth. 

"Our 5G build is unique in that we are truly creating a 'network of networks,' where each enterprise can custom-tailor a network slice or group of slices to achieve their specific business needs. IBM's orchestration solutions leverage AI, automation and machine learning to not only make these slices possible, but to ensure they adapt over time as customer use evolves," said Marc Rouanne, chief network officer, DISH Wireless. "With IBM, DISH is combining the speed and latency advances of 5G with the customization and intelligence of the cloud, and the result will be a paradigm shift for small businesses, large enterprises and the broader wireless industry."

"This is a seminal moment for DISH and the global telecommunications industry," said Steve Canepa, managing director, IBM Global Communications Sector. "By utilizing IBM's AI-powered automation and intent-driven network orchestration software, DISH can develop and deploy network offerings, applying advanced AI with IBM Watson and orchestration capabilities to help optimize network operations and performance. As a result, DISH can accelerate time to market for new innovative services powered by a secured, automated, intelligent and agile 5G network." 

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-pak-for-network-automation

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L-com intros Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers

L-com, an Infinite Electronics brand and a preferred manufacturer of wired and wireless connectivity products, announced today that it has launched a new series of Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFA) and directly modulated fiber transmitters.

The new EDFA fiber amplifiers feature high-performance erbium-doped fiber with a low noise pump laser, embedded automatic monitoring system, AC power, 78 channels and an FC port. They operate on the 1550nm wavelength.

L-com's new directly modulated fiber transmitters are available in both 1310nm and 1550nm wavelength versions and feature AC Power, one SC/APC connector and a wide automatic gain control (AGC) range in the 1.2 GHz band.

"Our new EDFA amplifiers and fiber transmitters are critical components for distributing and extending optical signals in CATV network applications. By using an erbium-doped design, these new products offer the highest levels of output power, gain and very low insertion loss, resulting in the highest quality output signals," said Paul Hospodar, Product Line Manager.

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Gigaphoton to double production of excimer laser light sources

Gigaphoton, a manufacturer of light sources used in semiconductor lithography, announced plans to double its production capacity of excimer laser light sources by 2023. The company is constructing a new facility, with its doors to open in April 2022, in order to establish a more stable supply system. 

Katsumi Uranaka, President & CEO of Gigaphoton said, “With demand for semiconductors on the rise around the world, we will do our utmost to meet the demand from our customers. This fiscal year, we will make full use of our existing resources for production and improve the efficiency of our production planning and lead times. Next year, the new facility will be completed and we will have a more stable supply system in place. As a manufacturer of lithography light sources, which are essential for semiconductor manufacturing, we will continue to contribute to the industrial sector by supporting the supply and operation of our products in a responsible manner.”

https://www.gigaphoton.com/en/

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HPE names Fidelma Russo as CTO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise named Fidelma Russo as Chief Technology Officer for the company. In this role, Russo will lead the innovation agenda and technology roadmap for HPE and manage the design and development of the HPE Greenlake edge-to-cloud platform.

Russo most recently served as senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Services business unit at VMware. She has also held senior leadership positions at Dell EMC, HP, Iron Mountain and Sun Microsystems. She currently serves as a director of SBA Communications and sits on the Audit Committee.

Fidelma holds a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering from University College Cork, a master’s in computer science degree from Boston University, and completed the Internet of Things Executive education program at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

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