Luxtera samples 40-Gbit optical active cable

NOVEMBER 12, 2007 -- Luxtera Inc. (search for Luxtera) asserts it is the first company to sample a 40-Gbit Optical Active Cable (OAC), the Blazar. Luxtera's OAC will be available to customers following its demonstration at the International Conference for High Performance Computing (SC07).

The product is targeted at InfiniBand and Ethernet applications in high-performance computing (HPC) clusters and data centers. The company will demonstrate the product several applications at the show.

"Demonstration of Luxtera's CMOS Photonics based 40-Gbit/sec Optical Active Cable is an important milestone for next-generation InfiniBand deployments," said Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing for Mellanox Technologies. "Systems with multi-core processors and PCIe Gen2 demand this I/O bandwidth for optimal clustered application performance and power efficiency. Higher bandwidths along with larger cluster sizes drive the demand for optical interconnect. Luxtera is well positioned to fill this need."

Data centers and HPC clusters will gain 2x throughput and 3x reach using Blazar versus existing optical active cables, Luxtera asserts. They will also gain 4x density improvement with one QSFP connector taking the same space as four XFP connectors, the company adds. Luxtera says that Blazar delivers these improvements at prices comparable to today's 20G interconnect.

"QSFP form factor enables higher density and higher connector reliability as well as provides smooth migration from SDR to DDR to QDR rates for the industry," said Lloyd Dickman, QLogic's CTO for InfiniBand Products. "We are excited that Luxtera has overcome many obstacles and provided the market with a QSFP optical active cable at a price point needed by the market."

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