OIF members approved the launch of the CEI-112G-Extra Short Reach (XSR)+ project at the organization’s Q3 2021 Technical and MA&E Committees Meeting in early August. The membership also initiated a pair of projects under the new Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Management track.
The CEI-112G-XSR+ effort seeks to enable a lower power, multi-source 112-Gbps electrical I/O interface (optimized for 106.25 Gbps). It will use what OIF called “advanced PCB and substrate technology” to support Near Package Optics (NPO) architectures – which is a step away from co-packaged optics. An XSR+ type of interface would enable longer distances between the optics and the semiconductor in NPO applications than the existing XSR interface does without adding significantly more power. OIF hopes to enable a multi-vendor open ecosystem for the approach.
Meanwhile, the two projects under the PLL Management track include an effort to transition ownership and maintenance of the Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) from the Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) to OIF. The second project focuses on CMIS extensions for co-packaging implementations.
“Our quarterly meetings provide a critical platform for our members to discuss and debate interoperability challenges and industry standards that help OIF continue its mission to accelerate industry innovation,” explained David Stauffer, OIF Physical & Link Layer Working Group chair and design engineer and standards professional at Kandou. “The new CEI-112G-XSR+ project will help strengthen an open ecosystem for NPO demonstrating OIF’s leadership in next-generation channel definition. Another significant new activity that addresses industry interoperability and standards is OIF’s new Management track. Due to the complementary/synergistic nature of the work with the OIF co-packaged optics, NPO, CEI and coherent optics projects, OIF will take over the ongoing CMIS revisions as well as further enhancements and CMIS extensions under this track.”
In other OIF news, Rob Stone of Facebook was appointed to the OIF board of directors during the meeting. Stone will serve the term for this position, which had been open, that goes through September 2022.
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