EMCORE releases reliability results for Connects Cables active optical cables

MARCH 30, 2010 -- EMCORE Corp. (NASDAQ: EMKR) announced reliability results for its fielded 20-Gbps active optical cables last week at OFC/NFOEC in San Diego.

According to a recent report by LightCounting, sales of active optical cables during the last three years were more than 150,000 units, with EMCORE shipping the majority of that volume. The reliability of EMCORE Connects Cables over that time period is better than 5 FITs, or five failures in one billion hours of device operation, the company asserts. This reliability performance demonstrates the suitability of 850-nm VCSEL array technology and multimode optical fiber for high performance data computing applications, the company says.

Chris Wiggins, director of EMCORE's Enterprise Business Group, says, "Our current generation of 40-Gbps active optical cable is based on the same technology [as the 20-Gbps version] and we expect the same high-reliability performance of these newer products."

EMCORE Connects Cables are bidirectional communications links converting four lanes of electrical signals into optical ones by modulating four monolithically integrated VCSELs operating at 850-nm wavelengths. The optical signals are carried by thin multimode optical fiber strands to the opposite end where they are converted back to electrical signals by a four-channel photodetector array. The use of high-bandwidth, low-loss optical fibers enable information to be transmitted at distances of more than 10X greater than that of copper cables.

Presently, the EMCORE Connects Cables product family with CX4 and QSFP interfaces is being sold in high volume for a range of applications including InfiniBand, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and PCI applications. The cables come in lengths up to 100 m and operate at speeds of up to 40 Gbps.

In April 2010, the company is expected to sample the next generation 150-Gbps CXP form-factor optical cable based on the same technology platform.

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