Infinera demos 1.6-Tbit/sec chip

March 27, 2006 Sunnyvale, CA -- Infinera has completed a lab demonstration of a large-scale photonic integrated circuit (PIC) capable of carrying data at a rate of 1.6 Terabits per second (Tbit/sec), the highest data rate yet achieved for a single PIC, according to the company. Last year, the company demonstrated a PIC capable of carrying data at 400 Gbit/sec.

"While this PIC is still a lab demonstration, it shows the enormous potential of photonic integration to put more and more devices, as well as more features and functionality, onto a single chip," comments Dave Welch, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Infinera. "[Photonic] integration...is the most powerful technology today for delivering economic and technical benefits to service providers, enterprises, and ordinary consumers using the Internet."

Infinera says the 1.6 Tbit/sec PIC includes more than 240 optical devices on-chip and can transmit 40 channels of optical data with each channel operating at 40 Gbit/sec. The aggregate date rate of 1.6 Tbit/sec is equivalent to 160 of the line cards typically deployed in long-haul telecom networks today, contends the company. According to the company, an optical system based on a 1.6 Tbit/sec PIC would deliver "substantial benefits to service providers in terms of density, space, power consumption, and cost-effectiveness."
At a rate of 1.6 Tbit/sec or 1.6 trillion bits per second, the company says the demonstrated chip could simultaneously transmit more than 50 million Internet telephone calls or 160,000 high-definition television broadcasts.
 
With Internet bandwidth growing "at double- and triple-digit rates," the company says its successful demonstration of a 1.6 Tbit/sec PIC shows the potential of photonic integration as "a key technology" for enabling optical networks to scale to greater data rates. The company notes that for the past twenty years the data rate of optical semiconductors in commercial markets has increased at a relatively steady rate, doubling about every 2.2 years, and concludes that its successful demonstration of its 1.6 Tbit/sec PIC - coming just a year after the company's demonstrating a 400 Gbit/sec PIC - shows the potential of photonic integration to scale at rates in keeping with the growth of Internet bandwidth.
 

 

 
Â