MultiPhy offers 100G PHY IC for metro networks

Startup optical semiconductor vendor MultiPhy Ltd has announced the MP1100Q, a 100-Gbps DEMUX receiver chip in CMOS designed for 4x25-Gbps approaches to lower-cost 100-Gbps in the metro.

Like CoreOptics and ClariPhy Communications before it, MultiPhy leverages Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation (MLSE) electronic dispersion compensation. How MultiPhy is the first company to offer MLSE decoding at speeds as high as 28-Gbps, asserts Neal Neslusan, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing.

The DSP-based MP1100Q combines an ultra-high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with the MLSE decoder and the DEMUX gearbox function. The power of the MLSE application enables designers to use 10-Gbps electro-optics to drive the 4x25-Gbps transmissions as far as 800 km in DWDM networks and 80-km in point-to-point applications, such as for data center links. The device is small enough to be incorporated in compact form-factor, pluggable (CFP) modules, Neslusan adds.

The device will support both optical duobinary (ODB) and on-off keying (OOK) modulation formats.

The MP1100Q will sample in the next quarter to initial customers. General availability is scheduled for the first quarter of 2012. Neslusan wouldn’t comment on customers, but allowed that the company was “working closely” with Oclaro, which contributed a quote to MultiPhy’s MP1100Q announcement.

“Just as coherent-based solutions are driving the long-haul 100-Gbps market, Oclaro believes that non-coherent pluggable solutions, using parallel DWDM transmitters and unique ICs, will be a key enabler of the growing 100-Gbps metro market,” Jim Haynes, president and general manager, Photonics Components at Oclaro, was quoted as saying in the announcement. “The direct detect transmission methodology enabled by the high-performance MP1100Q chip is the ideal solution for the cost-conscious and power-conscious 100G metro transport market where reaches between 40 km and 800 km are required.”

A second MP1100Q press release contained an endorsement from Christoph Glingerner, CTO at ADVA Optical Networking. That company has already announced a metro 100-Gbps offering based on a 4x28-Gbps approach (see “ADVA Optical Networking offers cost-reduced 100-Gbps for metro networks”).

Neslusan says MultiPhy also has chips for 40-Gbps direct detect applications in development. The company has devices for coherent applications in the works as well, he added.