II‐VI Inc. (NASDAQ: IIVI) says it has taped out its first coherent DSP. The Steelerton DSP will be used in II-VI optical modules to enable 100-Gbps coherent transmission in access and aggregation network applications.
The company will use the 7-nm Steelerton for its own purposes and thus will not make it available as a standalone product, according to II-VI sources. QSFP28 DCO optical transceivers that leverage the DSP should be unveiled early next year. The company sources acknowledged that II-VI has a further DSP development roadmap but declined to provide details.
The company has developed the Steelerton DSP to meet the size and low power dissipation (2 W typical) requirements expected to apply coherent optics in access networks, particularly in a pluggable QSFP28 package.
“The Steelerton DSP promises to bring 100-Gbps QSFP28-DCO transceivers into the mainstream in access networks,” said Matthias Berger, vice president, coherent technology, at II-VI. “It’s a breakthrough solution that enables wide-scale deployment of full C-Band tunable coherent transceivers into QSFP28 ports, of which there are tens of millions in service. The Steelerton DSP is less than one-fifth the size and consumes less than half the power of any other 100 Gbps coherent DSP commercially available.”
II-VI plans to demonstrate its coherent transceiver technology during the Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) & DCI World event June 21-23 in Barcelona.
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