OIF publishes CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 Extended Extra Short Reach IA

 OIF published two Implementation Agreements (IA):

Common Electrical I/O (CEI) CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 Extended Extra Short Reach - which specifies a 112 Gb/s PAM4 electrical interface for die-to-die (D2D) and die-to-optical-engine (D2OE) interconnect with bump-to-bump insertion loss up to 13 dB at the Nyquist frequency and baud rate in the range 36 Gsym/s to 58 Gsym/s. The intended applications encompass multiple-chip modules (MCM), co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-package optics (NPO) assemblies. It also details the requirements for the CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 extended extra short reach high-speed electrical interface with nominal baud rates between 36 Gsym/s and 58 Gsym/s using PAM4 modulation.

“The CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA represents a significant milestone, extending the reach of previously published XSR class specifications at this speed range,” said David Stauffer, OIF Physical and Link Layer Working Group Chair and Kandou Bus, S.A. “This IA empowers advanced interconnectivity solutions in die-to-die and die-to-optical-engine scenarios, supporting baud rates up to 112 Gb/s (58 Gsym/s). These specifications have the opportunity to revolutionize multiple-chip modules, co-packaged optics, and near-package optics applications, pushing the boundaries of high-speed data transmission.”

Matt Brown, editor of the CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA and Alphawave Semi, added, “The CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA addresses a gap in the set of OIF CEI specifications to address new applications identified by the diverse membership of the OIF.”

Coherent Common Management Interface Specification (C-CMIS) IA 1.3 - extends the Common Management Interface Specification [CMIS] to allow the management of digital coherent optics (DCO) modules. Initially covering 400ZR modules, this IA supports the management of modules that have a single data path with an eight-lane host interface for a 400GBASE-R Ethernet signal and a single-lane 400G coherent media interface based on the 400ZR specification. Future extensions to accommodate other DCO modules are anticipated.

OIF released an Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Enhanced Network Operations Technical White Paper that addresses the interoperability requirements for enhanced network functions that interface between transport networks and their management-control systems. It identifies various use cases for applying AI to guide interoperability and provides insights into data requirements, processing needs, output specifications and interfaces relevant to each use case.

OIF released its ECOC 400ZR+ Demo White Paper, which presents the methodology and results of an interoperability study of OpenZR+ MSA QSFP-DD transceivers conducted during the ECOC 2023 plugfest. Ten different transceivers were cross-connected in a matrix of transmitter-to-receiver combinations using a noise-loaded link to characterize the penalties associated with supplier interoperability. Individual transceiver performance was tested using 400GE traffic over a shortened optical line system link with a DWDM 75GHz fixed channel grid and a separate configuration to capture the transmitter error vector magnitude (EVM) performance. The transceiver receiver OSNR performance is compared against the transceiver transmitter EVM performance for each vendor.

In addition, OIF will be hosting a series of free CMIS Technical Webinars. The next webinar, “Data Path State Machine (DPSM) and Application Advertising,” will be held on February 7th. These webinars aim to equip engineers, developers and industry professionals with a comprehensive understanding of CMIS. 

https://www.oiforum.com/oif-unveils-cei-112g-xsr-pam4-extended-extra-short-reach-implementation-agreement-paving-the-way-for-advanced-interconnectivity/

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Cirion teams with Qwilt on CDN for Latin America

Cirion Technologies is working with Qwilt to bring a more efficient and scalable content delivery network in Latin America. This new partnership, based on Qwilt’s Open Caching technology, allows Cirion to scale up rapidly as market demand increases. It substantially increases Cirion’s ability to reliably deliver high-quality live and VoD streaming throughout the region and becomes one of the largest low-latency CDN service providers across Latin America.

Cirion, previously the Latin American operations of Lumen Technologies, counts over 50,000km of terrestrial long-haul and metropolitan fiber optics, 36,000km of submarine cables and 18 landing stations.

“Our infrastructure adapts dynamically and in real-time to market demands, enabling an efficient management of critical applications and their data. This makes it possible for companies to identify market trends in advance and respond quickly, with solutions that stimulate future growth,” says Girardotti.

“Cirion is an exciting addition to our global ecosystem of service providers, and we are delighted to help power a unique content delivery service offering in Latin America,” said Alon Maor, CEO, Qwilt. “Our all-edge architecture provides a new economic model for streaming delivery, in which Cirion’s network infrastructure and CDN services play a central role in the end-to-end value chain. This announcement underscores the momentum we are gathering as we realize our ambition to build the world’s highest performing edge delivery network.”

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Equinix debuts Fabric Cloud Router

Equinix introduced a new virtual routing service to help enterprises easily connect applications and data across multiple clouds and on-premise deployments. 

Equinix Fabric Cloud Router simplifies a complex cloud-to-cloud and hybrid cloud networking challenges by providing an easy-to-configure, enterprise-grade, multicloud routing service that can be deployed in under a minute. By using Equinix's secure private connectivity, customers can connect applications across public clouds in more locations than any other service.

Equinix Fabric Cloud Router is now available in all 58 Equinix Fabric-enabled markets globally with low latency connectivity to all major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, as well as hundreds of other service providers like Akamai, ServiceNow and Zoom. Delivered as a service on demand and in near real time, Equinix Fabric Cloud Router can remove the costs and complexities of owning and operating a physical router or licensing a virtual router. By removing these limitations, customers can improve application performance, reduce cloud costs and accelerate services to market. Enterprises can also accelerate their multicloud adoption by avoiding vendor lock-in with Equinix's cloud agnostic service, eliminating networking constraints and enabling them to choose the right cloud environment and provider for specific workloads.

"Multicloud networking is hard, but now with the launch of Equinix Fabric Cloud Router we are simplifying it for businesses everywhere by helping users connect different clouds in as little as 45 seconds. This is what you'd expect from Equinix, the leader in multicloud networking," said Arun Dev, Vice President of Digital Interconnection at Equinix. "By combining Equinix's steadfast commitment to cloud and network neutrality that has spanned more than 25 years, our leading access to cloud on-ramps, and the largest selection of cloud providers and services partners, Equinix is uniquely positioned to provide the on-demand digital infrastructure today's enterprises need." 

Highlights:

• Multicloud Performance – Customers achieve the low latency between all major cloud providers with Equinix's cloud-adjacent locations around the world, eliminating the need to backhaul traffic through a remote location. This superior cloud-to-cloud networking performance enables customers to quickly and easily support evolving infrastructure demands, like cloud migrations.
• Private Connectivity – By easily deploying private network connections, customers can avoid exposing sensitive data and network infrastructure to the risks of the public internet and support data sovereignty requirements.
• Enterprise-Grade – Customers can act with confidence knowing they are supported by a 99.999% uptime SLA and can scale bandwidth and connectivity across clouds without constraint using speeds up to 50Gbps, with hundreds of gigabits of aggregate throughput supported per router.
• Lowering Costs – Enterprises can reduce cloud egress costs by up to 75% using private cloud connections rather than egress over the internet. Built-in Equinix Fabric Cloud Router resilience can save IT teams even more by eliminating the need for expensive redundant routers. Delivered as a service, customers can pay only for what they need without being locked into long-term contracts and have the flexibility to scale up and down as needed.

https://www.equinix.com/newsroom/press-releases/2024/01/equinix-enhances-multicloud-networking-portfolio-enabling-enterprises-to-easily-and-efficiently-connect-applications-across-multiple-clouds

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Nokia invests in German R&D

Nokia announced a substantial €360 million investment in software, hardware, and chip design at its Ulm and Nuremberg sites as part of a four-year European IPCEI project. 

The initiative, which is a collaborative effort funded by Nokia, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK), and the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, is focused on the integrated development of software, hardware, and high-performance systems-on-chips based on a digital twin, with applications in radio and optical products for future mobile communications systems.

Nokia says the investment will have a profound impact on the telecommunications industry in Germany and Europe. It will boost Europe's competitiveness and innovation capacity, particularly in microelectronics for emerging technologies like 6G and artificial intelligence. 

Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “This important funding will support our efforts to advance the telecommunications industry in Germany and in Europe, helping to drive innovation and strengthen competitiveness. In particular, it will help our research into microelectronics that will power future technologies such as 6G, artificial intelligence and the metaverse as well as develop networks that are more energy-efficient and powerful. Germany is an important market for Nokia, and we look forward to working with the government to produce cutting-edge technology that is ‘Made in Germany’.”

Highlights

• Nokia is investing €360 million in software, hardware, and chip design in Ulm and Nuremberg, as part of a four-year European IPCEI project.
• The project aims to develop integrated software, hardware, and high-performance chips for 5G-Advanced and 6G standards, with a focus on energy efficiency to support European climate targets.
• This investment is expected to strengthen Europe's competitiveness in microelectronics, boost innovation for 6G and AI, enable metaverse applications, and enhance network energy efficiency.

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2024/01/17/nokia-plans-eu360-million-investment-in-microelectronics-and-communications-technology-in-germany/

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Arelion opens 2nd PoP in Tokyo

Arelion today announced a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) at AT TOKYO's carrier-neutral data center, Chuo Center #1 (CC1). The new PoP is Arelion's second Tokyo PoP and third Japan PoP after its Osaka PoP. 

Chuo Center #1 is one of the largest data centers in Japan with 31 MW capability, gaining popularity as a global connectivity hub for multinational businesses that require high-speed access to Japan's thriving enterprise markets. Japan's financial sector is booming amid national economic growth policies, with Japanese banks holding $17.7 trillion in total financial assets as of 2022. Chuo Center #1 has developed a substantial ecosystem of global Internet carriers, Internet service providers, cloud providers and enterprises, enabling Arelion to support its customers' business expansions through scalable connectivity to cloud, communications, Internet Exchanges and content services.

Chuo Center #1 is designed to mitigate natural disasters, enabling Arelion to provide redundant, resilient connectivity services to wholesale and enterprise customers seeking direct access to APAC markets. Due to its strategic location, Arelion's second Tokyo PoP will provide accessibility to subsea landing stations in the future, with plans to connect Arelion's backbone directly into Chuo Center #1. This will provide fully diverse connectivity out of Japan in addition to Arelion's Osaka PoP, building on Arelion's networking strategy in the APAC region.

Arelion's AS1299 is directly connected to over 70 percent of global Internet routes and has been ranked by Kentik as the #1 backbone in Asia. It is an excellent choice for Japanese businesses requiring world-class customer service and high-capacity, low-latency connectivity to international markets.

"By bringing our #1 ranked Internet backbone to AT TOKYO, we will enhance our presence in Tokyo, extending our reach to Japan's financial center in Tokyo for our enterprise customers," said Wee Kwan, Head of APAC, Arelion. "Chuo Center #1 offers low cross-connect costs, providing our customers with cost-savings as they rely on our high-quality connectivity services to power their global businesses and meet their technological needs."

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Seagate ships 30TB drives based on HAMR tech

Seagate introduced its Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform based on its Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology for achieving 3TB+ per platter—and a roadmap that will achieve 4TB+ and 5TB+ per platter in the coming years.

The Mozaic 3+ platform powers Seagate’s flagship Exos product family, with newly announced, industry-leading capacity points of 30TB and up. Exos 30TB+ drives are shipping in volume this quarter to hyperscale cloud customers.

Seagate says that upgrading from a 16TB conventional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) drive (the average capacity in large-scale data centers) to an Exos 30TB Mozaic 3+ technology drive effectively doubles capacity in the same footprint.

“Seagate is the world’s only hard drive manufacturer with the areal density capability to get to 3TB per platter and with 5TB on the horizon,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate’s CEO. “As AI use cases put a premium on raw data sets, more companies are going to need to store all the data they can. To accommodate the resulting masses of data, areal density matters more than ever.”

Additional highlights:

• Superlattice Platinum-Alloy Media. Fundamental physics of higher-density recording requires smaller media grain size at nanoscale. The challenge here is that smaller grains are more unstable. Legacy alloys do not provide sufficient magnetic stability for effective and reliable storage. In Mozaic 3+ hard drives, the media alloy uses a pioneering iron-platinum superlattice structure, which significantly increases the magnetic coercivity of disk media. This allows for precise data writing and unprecedented bit stability.
• Plasmonic Writer. Since the media are made magnetically “harder” to prevent instability, the design requires a revolutionary writer—a marvel of miniaturization and precision engineering that is Seagate’s unique implementation of HAMR. Anchoring this technology is a nanophotonic laser, which produces an infinitesimal heat spot on the media surface to reliably write the data. Seagate plans to vertically integrate the nanophotonic laser into the plasmonic writer sub-system. “Developing this unique laser technology in-house for Mozaic 3+ will ensure even greater efficiency and yield to support rapid scaling of volume production,” Mosley said.
• Gen 7 Spintronic Reader. Smaller grains of written data are only useful if they can be read. Integrated along with the sub-components of the plasmonic writer, the reader also needed to evolve. Incorporating quantum technology, Mozaic 3+ includes one of the world's smallest and most sensitive magnetic field reading sensors.
• 12nm Integrated Controller. Efficiently orchestrating all this technology called for an integrated controller, a system-on-a-chip, developed entirely in house. This sophisticated application-specific integrated circuit delivers up to 3 times the performance compared to prior solutions.

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IDC: Telco cloud infrastructure software market forecast

International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide revenue for telco cloud infrastructure software, including virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud-native network functions (CNFs), and network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI), across four market subsegments (core transport, mobile infrastructure, mobile backhaul, access networks and virtual CPE), will grow from $12.9 billion in 2022 to $27.3 billion in 2027. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.1% over the 2022-2027 forecast period.

IDC expects the CNF to grow rapidly in part due to the recent emergence and growing initiative to deploy cloud-native, container-based telco workloads across the telco cloud. Accordingly, the forecast breaks out cloud-native network functions as a separate line item.

In addition, with the inclusion and discrete breakout of cloud-native network functions, IDC recognizes the impact on NFVI and underlying shifts toward container-as-a-service (CaaS) offerings that include container-based infrastructure management such as Kubernetes, or even hybrid deployment models in which containers are deployed on bare metal or virtual machines (VMs). In addition, in a cloud-native world, the impetus is on comms service providers to deploy network functions across edge sites while continuing to manage a mix of core and edge sites on horizontal telco cloud platforms based on a common software foundation.

"Adoption of cloud-native network functions is gaining momentum, with CNFs being deployed alongside virtual network functions across comms service providers' cloud-based digital infrastructure for service agility, lower cost of ownership, and elastic scaling of the network," said Ajeet Das, research director, Telecom Network Infrastructure at IDC. "However, these operators face a range of daunting challenges, including lack of in-house expertise in cloud-native orchestration and infrastructure, difficulty defining and implementing comprehensive security, and operational complexity of managing on-premises, cloud, and multi-cloud networks."

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS51778424

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LightRiver appoints Brinksma as SVP Software Solutions

LightRiver has appointed Jim Brinksma as Senior Vice President of Software Solutions. Brinksma will be based out of LightRiver's Holmdel Software Development Center in New Jersey.

Brinksma's career spans Department of Defense, SaaS startups, financial services, and telecommunications. His previous roles include Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Megaport, Co-founder & CTO of InnovoEdge (acquired by Megaport), VP of Strategy & Business Development at Ciena BluePlanet, VP of Sales Engineering & Customer Operations at Ciena, and VP Network Products & Strategy at Goldman Sachs. He also served over seven years in the United States Navy.

"Jim's appointment comes at a crucial time as we expand the delivery of cutting-edge, next-generation optical networking technologies, software-defined networks, and automated wavelength monitoring services," states Mike Jonas, CEO of LightRiver. "I'm thrilled to welcome Jim to our leadership team. His extensive experience in corporate and software development, combined with his visionary approach, aligns perfectly with our efforts to revolutionize network infrastructures and operations for our clients."

https://lightriver.com

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Quantinuum raises $300 million

Quantinuum, a quantum computing company formed through the combination of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum, raised , at a pre-money valuation of $5 billion. The round is anchored by Quantinuum’s strategic partner JPMorgan Chase, with additional participation from Mitsui & Co., Amgen and Honeywell, which remains the company’s majority shareholder. This investment brings the total capital raised by Quantinuum since inception to approximately $625 million.

This capital raise represents Quantinuum’s first equity funding round since Cambridge Quantum Computing and Honeywell Quantum Solutions merged in November 2021. The funds will be used to accelerate the path towards achieving the world’s first universal fault-tolerant quantum computers, while also extending Quantinuum’s software offering to enhance commercial applicability.

JPMorgan Chase has one of the world’s most highly regarded specialist teams working on quantum technologies within the financial services industry and has been working with Quantinuum and its predecessor companies since 2020. The company was one of the earliest experimental users of Quantinuum’s H-Series quantum processor and is also one of the most active corporate partners that employs Quantinuum’s software development kit, known as “TKET.”

Lori Beer, Global Chief Information Officer at JPMorgan Chase said: “Financial services has been identified as one of the first industries that will benefit from quantum technologies. As such, we have been investing in quantum research and our team of experts – led by Dr. Marco Pistoia – have made groundbreaking discoveries, partnering with quantum computing leaders like Quantinuum. We look forward to continuing to work together to positively impact our businesses, customers and the industry at large.”

https://www.quantinuum.com/news/honeywell-announces-the-closing-of-300-million-equity-investment-round-for-quantinuum-at-5b-pre-money-valuation

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