Elenion Technologies earlier this month unveiled its Coherent Silicon Transmitter and Receiver (CSTAR) optical BGA platform. The platform is available in variants that support up to 600-Gbps per wavelength, with a 200-Gbps version currently sampling to customers. Elenion expects the CSTAR platform to find use in a variety of module form factors and applications, including OIF 400ZR QSFP-DD optical transceivers.
CSTAR platform is a multi-chip-module (MCM) in a non-hermetic BGA package that integrates Elenion’s silicon photonics and RFICs. The platform is coherent DSP agnostic and could be used in onboard optics modules as well as pluggable transceivers, the company anticipates.
The 200-Gbps version, the CSTAR-200, is sampling to customers. “We are excited to be partnering with Elenion on our award-winning CFP2-DCO. Elenion’s CSTAR platform allows us to offer differentiated coherent solutions to our customers,” said Siraj ElAhmadi, president and general manager of Menara Networks, by way of example. AOC Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jabil Inc. (NYSE: JBL), also is using the CSTAR-200 for its CFP2-DCO (see “Jabil AOC Technologies jumps into coherent 100G/200G CFP2-DCO optical transceivers”). Meanwhile, Elenion investor Molex, through its Optical Solutions Group, says it will collaborate with Elenion on the development of future coherent optical modules (see “Molex, Elenion Technologies extend silicon photonics collaboration”). The work will include creation of a 400ZR device, a Molex source revealed at OFC 2019.
“From the beginning at Elenion, we’ve built our silicon photonic chips in a production CMOS fab, which enables us to build complex optical devices,” said Michael Hochberg, CTO, Elenion. “Having leveraged on-chip complexity to eliminate all of the isolators, lenses, and other free space optics from our package, Elenion is taking these chips and having them assembled in a production electronics-attach environment, reusing the infrastructure investment from the ASIC industry. We believe that this is a milestone for the silicon photonics industry, and represents an inflection point with regard to the cost of packaging for silicon photonics and integrated photonic components in general.”
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