March 24, 2010Despite appearances, 40G/100G is not the only area of innovation evident here in San Diego. So in honor of these potentially overshadowed developments, today's blog will be 40G/100G free. You're welcome.
At a breakfast roundtable hosted by Nokia Siemens Networks to discuss the technology I just said I'm not mentioning here, Alan Sardella, senior product marketing manager, high end systems at Juniper Networks, reported that the Menara Networks "OTN in an XFP" product for which the router vendor was the first announced customer is currently in lab trials. He described it as "less flexible than LR4 optics" but useful for metro and other medium-distance links "not needing many wavelengths." The product has a niche, Sardells said...
Companies interested in tunable XFPs will soon have two choices, as Finisar says it will step up to challenge JDSU. The company is showing of a device VP of Marketing Rafik Ward says will offer an extinction ratio of greater than 13 dB. Finisar has both PIN and APD versions planned and is looking at an APD and variable optical attenuator pairing as well. The devices should begin sampling by the end of June, with general availability in the fourth quarter of this year. Performance, power dissipation, and flexibility will be the key differentiating points, Ward predicted...
That said, Tom Fawcett of JDSU indicated his company's tunable XFP, which is already in production, won't take a back seat to anyone's when it comes to performance. JDSU is displaying several other new developments in its booth as well. These include a module version of the optical building blocks that make up its AON Super Transport Blade. The company discovered that some customers were interested in the building blocks but didn't want to partner with JDSU to come up with a blade. So JDSU now offers do-it-yourselfers an integrated package that would fit in a two-slot-wide design. Meanwhile, the company also announced a 1x23 wavelength-selective switch (WSS). The idea is not to support 23-degree ROADMs, but rather 4D colorless directionless add/drop applications in place of a pair of 1x9s in add/drop banks. The company isn't commenting yet on a release date...
Bookham also announced a 1x23 WSS, thus leveraging the technology is acquired when it bought Xtellus. Krishna Bala, who is now exeutive vice president and division manager for WSS at Bookham, commented that the "gridless" ROADMs Verizon is said to be calling for (just in case whatever transmission technology is required to support the data rates that come after those I'm not discussing here must operate off the ITU grid) would be just a small part of the overall rethinking of the network that gridless capabilities would require -- which I take to mean he's not going to begin work on a gridless WSS tomorrow...
One company that won't have a 1x23 WSS -- but now could afford to build one -- is Nistica. CEO Ashish Vengsarkar said he was very pleased to add NTT Electronics as an investor as part of the company's recent Series C round. He also noted the loss of Finisar, which had previously been an investor, but now has WSS technology of its own through its acquisition of Optium. Vengsarkar says he'll use the money to bring the company's edge ROADM subsystems to full production in Vietnam. The company also has a new 1x2, 25-GHz subystem, which Vengsarkar says is indicative of the company's direction, which doesn't include 1x23 and similar large-port-count offerings. He says Nistica has the technology to play in a gridless environment...
Back at 10G, that data rate is new in the PON world. OneChip Photonics is licking its chops at the chance to roll out 10G PON devices by the end of this year. The first will likely be 10G EPON, thanks to the fact that the relevant standards are already in place and Asian vendors are eager to take advantage of them. The company thinks that its PIC-based technology, which VP of Marketing Communications Steve Bauer and VP, Product Line Management Andy Weirich say that the 20-25% cost advantage their technology enables for current PON systems could grow to as high as 50% at 10G. The company has interest in producing its own version of an "ONU in an SFP" (keep an eye peeled for an article on such devices in the April issue of Lightwave) and is also looking at other markets for its technology. (See the related article in our March issue for more.)...
More electronics to enable 10G EPON are starting to come on line as well. For example, Gennum has introduced the GN7350 single-chip transceiver, which includes both CDR and laser driver capabilities. The device is one of six new products on display in the company's meeting room on the show floor. Most of these focus on 10G, but it also has a 6G device primarily for wireless backhaul applications in China...
Avago Technologies is touting an embedded mid-board fiber-optic interconnect technology it developed with IBM for use in the latter's supercomputers. The tiny 12x10G parallel optic modules, which leverage PRIZM connector technology developed by USConec, could ship in extremely high volumes, Avago expects.
