Tower Semi and Juniper develop silicon photonics process

Tower Semiconductor and Juniper Networks announced a silicon photonics (SiPho) foundry-ready process with integrated III-V lasers, amplifiers modulators and detectors. 

Potential applications include optical connectivity in datacenters and telecom networks, as well as AI, LiDAR and other sensors. 

The new platform co-integrates III-V lasers, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), electro-absorption modulators (EAM) and photodetectors with silicon photonics devices, all monolithically on a single chip. This enables smaller, higher-channel count and more power-efficient optical architectures and solutions. Foundry availability will enable a broad array of product developers to create highly integrated photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for diverse markets.   

Process design kits (PDK) are expected to be available by year end and the first open multi-project wafer (MPW) run are expected to be offered early next year. First samples of full 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s PICs reference designs with integrated laser are expected to be available in the second quarter of 2022. 

“Our mutual development work with Tower has been extraordinarily successful in qualifying this innovative silicon photonics technology in a high-volume manufacturing facility,” said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. “By offering this capability to the entire industry, Juniper offers the potential to radically reduce the cost of optics while lowering the barrier to entry for customers”. 

“Our partnership with Juniper on silicon photonics is bringing a paradigm shift for product development across our industry,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor. “It is now possible to mix the advantages of III-V semiconductors with high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing. Being the singular open market, integrated laser silicon photonics platform, and having a multi-year advantage over any potential foundry competitor, we are jointly creating breakthrough products with truly unique value for our industry and for society as a whole”. 

https://towersemi.com/2021/12/21/12212021/

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Pacific Light subsea cable gets U.S. green light

Google and Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) reached an agreement with Team Telecom (U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security) on how to protect data on the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) system, an undersea fiber optic cable system that will connect the United States, Taiwan and the Philippines. 

“These agreements enable Google and Meta to take advantage of critical, additional cable capacity while protecting U.S. persons’ privacy and security through terms that reflect the current threat environment,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who leads Team Telecom’s work for the Justice Department. “This resolution also demonstrates Team Telecom’s ability to resolve complex cases involving critical infrastructure in a timely matter, thanks to recent reforms of our structure and process.”

Under the National Security Agreements, Google and Meta (and their subsidiaries) have agreed to (among other terms):

• Conduct annual assessments of risk to sensitive data that transits the PLCN cable system, including when the data exits the cable;
• Pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia, including but not limited to Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam; and
• Restrict access to information and infrastructure by Pacific Light Data Communications Co. Ltd (PLDC), the Hong Kong-based owner of PLCN that withdrew its application for an FCC license.

In June 2020, the committee publicly recommended that the FCC partially deny a previous application for PLCN with respect to PLCN’s proposed connections to Hong Kong and to the portions of the PLCN owned by PLDC. Shortly after that recommendation, the applicants withdrew the original PLCN application. Google’s and Meta’s subsidiaries then filed a new FCC application removing Hong Kong and seeking to operate only the United States, Taiwan and Philippines portions of PLCN. 

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/team-telecom-recommends-fcc-grant-google-and-meta-licenses-undersea-cable

Google gains partial clearance for Pacific Light subsea cable

Thursday, April 09, 2020  Google, Submarine, Subsea  

Google was granted clearance by the FCC to operate the segment of the Pacific Light Cable Network System connecting the United States to Taiwan for the next six months, pending a final disposition of the license application. The temporary authorization does not authorize any commercial traffic on the subsea cable segments to/from the Philippines or Hong Kong.

The U.S. Department of Justice, along with the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, advised the FCC that those agencies do not oppose Google's request carry traffic over the cable between the U.S. and Taiwan.

In its application for Special Temporary Authority, Google emphasized “an immediate need to meet internal demand for capacity between the U.S. and Taiwan” and that without the sought temporary authority Google would likely have to seek alternative capacity at “significantly higher prices.”

Under the terms of the Provisional National Security Agreement, Google has agreed to a range of operational requirements, notice obligations, access and security guarantees, as well as auditing and reporting duties, among others. The Provisional National Security Agreement also includes a commitment by Google to “pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia,” as well as to establish network facilities that deliver traffic “as close as practicable” to its ultimate destination.  This term reflects the views of the Executive Branch that a direct cable connection between the United States and Hong Kong would pose an unacceptable risk to the national security and law enforcement interests of the United States.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/reports/related_filing.hts?f_key=2252704&f_number=SCLSTA2020040200015

Google and Facebook Team Up for Pacific Light Cable Network

Wednesday, October 12, 2016  Facebook, Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

Facebook and Google are teaming up to build the highest capacity, trans-Pacific cable system to date.

The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will stretch 12,800 km between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, will have an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps.  The cable is expected to enter service in the summer of 2018. The project is organized by Pacific Light Data Communication Co. Ltd., a new company based in Hong Kong.

TE SubCom has been appointed lead contractor. The cable will use TE SubCom’s C+L technology, a major step forward in available cable transmission capacity that effectively doubles the available bandwidth and capacity per fiber pair over a traditional C-band-only designed system.

Google noted that it has now taken an ownership stake in six submarine cables: PLCN, Unity, SJC, FASTER, MONET and Tannat.

Facebook backs Bifrost cable from U.S. to Southeast Asia

Monday, March 29, 2021  ASN, Facebook, Indonesia, Subsea  

In addition to its participation in the Echo subsea cable from the U.S. to Singapore, Facebook confirmed its investment in the Bifrost Cable System from the U.S. to South East Asia.The Bifrost Cable System will span over 15,000 km, connecting Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Guam and the west coast of North America. The cable is expected to be completed in 2024.The project is also backed by Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation Limited...

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Facebook and Google collaborate on U.S.-Guam-Singapore cable

Monday, March 29, 2021  Facebook, Google, Singapore, Subsea  

Facebook and Google are lead investors in a new subsea cable from Eureka, California to Singapore, with a stop-over in Guam.

The Echo subsea cable will be the first to directly connect the U.S. to Singapore with direct fiber pairs over an express route. The cable is expected to have landings in Indonesia and possibly other locations. 

In a blog posting, Google said Echo's unique route to Southeast Asia will avoid the crowded, traditional paths to the north. The cable is expected to be ready for service in 2023.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing-the-echo-subsea-cable

https://engineering.fb.com/2021/03/28/connectivity/echo-bifrost/

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Fastweb carries 600 Gbps wavelength across 1,372km with Infinera

Fastweb, one of the main telecom providers in Italy, completed a single-wavelength service connectivity speed trial of 600 Gb/s across its network, including the Milan-Bari optical route spanning 1,372 kilometers. The trial used Infinera’s fifth-generation ICE6 800G technology on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform. 

Infinera said its ICE6 solution enabled Fastweb to increase network capacity by up to two times. The ICE6 solution features probabilistic constellation shaping and digital Nyquist subcarrier technology with dual-carrier super-channels, enabling successful transmission of 1.2 Tb/s signals on the Milan-Bari route. The combination of these technologies improves Fastweb’s spectral efficiency and boosts existing capacity on its current Infinera flexible-grid backbone network.

Fastweb has now selected Infinera’s ICE6 solution to enhance its backbone network and is poised to launch new 400 Gigabit Ethernet services across its existing infrastructure. 

“Sustaining the digital transformation efforts of enterprises and meeting our customers’ need is our primary objective,” said Marco Arioli, Technology Officer, Fastweb. “We are constantly looking to improve our infrastructure to ensure we can always provide our customers with the highest bandwidth and best-quality services they need to be successful. ICE6 is a significant step forward for us, substantially increasing the capacity of our network with a smooth upgrade path and enabling us to keep up with the relentless demand for increased capacity of unpredictable bandwidth-hungry events.”

“Infinera’s ICE6 solution enables network operators to meet the demands of rapid bandwidth growth by providing the greatest capacity at the greatest reach, resulting in the most cost-effective and spectrally efficient solution,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Infinera. “We are pleased to continue to support Fastweb’s upgrade of its network infrastructure to meet today’s growing bandwidth demands.”

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NVIDIA's BlueFiled DPU claims performance record: 41.5 million IOPS

NVIDIA is reporting a new performance benchmark for DPUs:  two BlueField-2 data processing units reached 41.5 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) — more than 4x more IOPS than any other DPU.

The BlueField-2 DPU delivered record-breaking performance using standard networking protocols and open-source software. It reached more than 5 million 4KB IOPS and from 7 million to over 20 million 512B IOPS for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), a common method of accessing storage media, with TCP networking, one of the primary internet protocols.

To accelerate AI, big data and high performance computing applications, BlueField provides even higher storage performance using the popular RoCE network transport option.

In testing, BlueField supercharged performance as both an initiator and target, using different types of storage software libraries and different workloads to simulate real-world storage configurations. BlueField also supports fast storage connectivity over InfiniBand, the preferred networking architecture for many HPC and AI applications.

Testing Methodology

The 41.5 million IOPS reached by BlueField is more than 4x the previous world record of 10 million IOPS, set using proprietary storage offerings. This performance was achieved by connecting two fast Hewlett Packard Enterprise Proliant DL380 Gen 10 Plus servers, one as the application server (storage initiator) and one as the storage system (storage target).

Each server had two Intel “Ice Lake” Xeon Platinum 8380 CPUs clocked at 2.3GHz, giving 160 hyperthreaded cores per server, along with 512GB of DRAM, 120MB of L3 cache (60MB per socket) and a PCIe Gen4 bus.

To accelerate networking and NVMe-oF, each server was configured with two NVIDIA BlueField-2 P-series DPU cards, each with two 100Gb Ethernet network ports, resulting in four network ports and 400Gb/s wire bandwidth between initiator and target, connected back-to-back using NVIDIA LinkX 100GbE Direct-Attach Copper (DAC) passive cables. Both servers had Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 8.3.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/12/21/bluefield-dpu-world-record-performance/

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Rockley Photonics cancels sale of datacom assets to Chinese JV

Rockley Photonics announced its intention not to proceed, under current circumstances, with its data-communications-related technical sale to Hengtong Rockley Technology Co. Ltd., its joint venture with Jiangsu Hengtong Optic-Electric Co..

The announcement follows last week's decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to add Jiangsu Hengtong Optic-Electric to its Entity List because of national security and human rights concerns.

“Rockley’s primary focus has been and continues to be on the development and commercialization of our sensing platform in the health monitoring space. We continue to make outstanding progress in this arena, as outlined in our recent customer and technology announcements, and our outlook for this business continues to show momentum,” said Andrew Rickman, founder and chief executive officer of Rockley. “The technical sale to the JV was intended as an efficient way to monetize Rockley’s innovative data communications technology without distracting from our primary focus on our health and wellness solutions.”

Dr. Rickman went on to say, “We continue to fully comply with the regulations and have decided not to proceed with our technical sale to the JV under the current circumstances. The BIS action will require us to adjust our strategy for monetizing our communications technology. While we are disappointed in the near-term impact on our company, we believe that this decision will be a net positive for Rockley and will not affect the long-term outlook for our business because these solutions were not core to our future growth prospects. We will continue to focus our resources on bringing solutions to the health and wellness market to satisfy the significant consumer and medtech demand we have reported. We are evaluating options to monetize our ultra-high-speed fiber optic communication solutions, which we believe could have a net positive impact on our cash.”

http://www.rockleyphotonics.com

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Smart Way Comm. to deploy Tarana's gigabit fixed wireless in Ohio

Smart Way Communications and Tarana announced today their joint plan for the first deployment of Tarana’s unique Gigabit 1 (G1) next-generation fixed wireless platform in Ohio. 

The first phase of installation, which is set to occur over the next 9 weeks, will serve the Dover and New Philadelphia area of Ohio’s Tuscarawas County, covering 12,000 households in 12 square miles.

Smart Way will leverage a combination of currently-owned and newly-acquired vertical asset rights, providing a solid foundation for establishing broad G1 coverage in neighborhoods that to date have been served by a single cable operator. 

Smart Way’s general manager, Ryan Grewell, said: “G1 is completely changing how we pursue markets. As a fixed wireless access provider we’ve always had limited success deploying in busier towns due to existing cable offerings and interference. Folks expect 100 Mbps plans, but with the busy 5 GHz spectrum in town, our prior Wi-Fi-based gear just wasn’t letting us offer them. We are excited about the ability to offer up to 200 Mbps service on very attractive terms. I know we couldn’t do this without Tarana, and I’m really looking forward to going to town with this technology.”

Tarana’s CEO, Basil Alwan, added: “We are delighted by how quickly the experienced team at Smart Way embraced G1’s unique capabilities, and we’re equally excited about supporting their move from the sidelines of the broadband game out onto the main field of competition. Ohio’s subscribers will certainly reap substantial benefits from Smart Way’s deployment without having to wait years for intrusive network upgrades.”

https://www.taranawireless.com

Tarana supplies fixed wireless for Rural Telecommunications of America

Monday, October 04, 2021  Fixed Wireless, Tarana  

Tarana Wireless, a start-up based in Milpitas, California, confirmed that it will supply its fixed wireless access solutions to Rural Telecommunications of America (RTA).RTA successfully completed testing and will begin deploying Tarana equipment to its gigFAST NETWORK service areas across 21 states of operation in October 2021. RTA validated claims by Tarana’s engineering teams responsible for its G1 platform. RTA found that in many cases G1 delivers...

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Tarana raises $88M for fixed wireless in unlicensed spectrum

Thursday, May 13, 2021  Silicon Valley, Start-Ups, Tarana  

Tarana Wireless, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $88 million in new funding for its fixed wireless solution for suburban broadband.Tarana claims its fixed wireless access technology, which uses unlicensed spectrum, will drive a tenfold improvement in the network economics of gigabit broadband access. The company developed its own silicon for advanced interference cancellation.  The funding round includes a $60 million...

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NEC highlights its Massive MIMO in O-RAN plugfest

NEC demonstrated its Open RAN massive MIMO capabilities for the O-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest 2021  at five of its venues, hosted by leading operators and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). 

NEC said its massive MIMO open Radio Units have been successfully integrated with more O-CU, O-DU from Open RAN software vendors than any other supplier.

NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker participated in multiple PlugFest venues across the globe this year, demonstrating their commercially proven, Open RAN 5G massive MIMO radio units (O-RU), Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution (O-RAN SMO) and RAN software. 

The companies participated in the following PlugFest venues: 

Menlo Park, USA

This venue was hosted at the TIP Community Lab in Menlo Park (sponsored by Meta). NEC deployed its O-RU with Mavenir's O-CU/DU for multi-vendor interoperability. 

Torino, Italy 

Netcracker deployed its Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution, aligned with the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration environment, at the Joint European O-RAN & TIP PlugFest venue hosted by European OTIC in TIM Innovation Lab - Torino. 5G RAN slice provisioning was validated using CU/DUs from Radisys based on the O1 interface. 

Tokyo, Japan

Hosted by NTT DOCOMO, the operator and NEC succeeded in interoperability testing for 5G standalone (SA) built on 5G CU/DU and multi-vendor radio units (RUs). DOCOMO and NEC demonstrated the capability to migrate from a commercial 5G NSA into 5G SA through a software upgrade, using the same 5G CU/DU hardware. 

NEC also deployed its O-RUs in a lab hosted by Rakuten Mobile and successfully completed verification of open fronthaul interfaces and 

3GPP RF conformance using Keysight Technologies' test solution.

Seoul, South Korea

NEC contributed to the PlugFest venue hosted by LG UPlus in its 5G Innovation Lab in the LG Science Park, Seoul. NEC deployed O-RU in LG UPlus's lab with O-CU/DU from Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony company, fronthaul gateway from DZS and Intel processors and FlexRAN reference software. 'E2E Open RAN on 5G standalone mode' was demonstrated using Keysight Technologies' test solution.

"Multi-vendor, high performance Open RAN is crucial to demonstrate market maturity. In 2021, the industry demonstrated great progress, and we are proud to have the first and only massive MIMO O-RAN product, making NEC the world's leader. We will continue working closely with customers and market-leading partners to deliver a vibrant ecosystem of open, high quality and high performance networks," states Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G Products, NEC.

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