Small-form-factor module group expands
23 May 2002 -- The 10-Gigabit Small Form-factor Pluggable (XFP) Module Group, Multi Source Agreement (MSA) association is growing. Founding member Finisar Corporation says the XFP association has experienced significant growth since its debut in March 2002, with 44 companies now participating.
The purpose of the group is to develop a common specification for multi-sourcing an application-agnostic, ultra-small form factor, 10Gbit/s module for the telecommunications, data communications and storage area network (SAN) markets.
Finisar demonstrated an XFP prototype module at the Optical Fibre Conference (OFC) in Anaheim, CA in March. The transceivers are designed to occupy one-fifth of the space and dissipate one-half the power of current 10Gbit/s modules.
"We are excited to see the way the XFP association is growing", said Dick Woodrow, VP Sales and Marketing at Finisar. "I believe key players in the industry are already considering XFP to be the best path to achieve the lowest overall system costs at 10Gbit/s, due to its low power dissipation, small size and multi-protocol support."
The XFP Group comprises networking companies, system suppliers, optical module manufacturers, semiconductor providers and connector companies from the telecommunications, data communications and SAN markets. The association is dedicated to technology and standards development for ultra-small form factor, 10 Gb/s communications modules.
The association has already distributed the first draft of the specification to its member companies for technical review, and has as an objective the development of a preliminary XFP specification by August for wider review.
