AppliedMicro tallies 100G coherent design wins for S28032 mux chip

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (NASDAQ: AMCC) says that its CMOS-based S28032 multiplexer chip is integral to the 100-Gbps coherent transmission designs of eight of the world's largest optical module manufacturers and systems companies. That fact that its use of CMOS translates into half the power consumption of competitive SiGe devices is a major reason for the multiplexer chip’s success, AppliedMicro sources say.

"As the first company to design a transmitter with this speed and performance in a CMOS process, we have changed the economics of deploying 100G coherent transmission solutions that are needed to fuel the widespread deployment of 100G OTN networks," said George Jones, vice president and co-general manager, Connectivity Products, at AppliedMicro via a press release. "CMOS solutions enable much lower power and, in turn, enable the delivery of more thermally efficient optical modules for operational cost savings and improved reliability."

The S28032 multiplexer chip operates up to 31.8 Gbps, dissipates less than 4 W, and supports polarization-multiplexed, quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK). In addition to the power savings, the use of CMOS also results in greater reliability than SiGe-based alternatives can provide, Jones told Lightwave.

Acacia Communications, which publicly unveiled its AC100 coherent 100-Gbps transponder last year (see “Acacia Communications details 100-Gbps coherent optical module”), is the only customer whose name AppliedMicro has revealed so far. "AppliedMicro has achieved a significant milestone by delivering this level of performance with a low power profile in CMOS technology, enabling higher quality and yield than older technologies," said Benny Mikkelsen, co-founder and CTO of Acacia Communications, in the same press release. "We're impressed by AppliedMicro's speed of design to production for this product. By deploying the S28032 multiplexer in our coherent modules, we can drive down the cost, size, and power requirements of our solutions, and fuel the rapid deployment of 100G connectivity in metro, regional and long-haul networks."

The S28032 is now in production. It has both CAUI and SFI-S interfaces. The input lanes are multiplexed into four lanes that operate from 28 Gbps to 32Gbps, to support various forward error correction (FEC) implementations. The device supports both hard- and soft-decision FEC, including proprietary approaches, AppliedMicro says.

"System vendors are seeing healthy demand for 100G on long-haul and metro DWDM line-side applications," said Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO at market research firm, LightCounting. "The number of 100G DWDM ports deployed per year is projected to triple by 2014. In addition, the potential opportunity for 100G transceivers in data centers is even larger, but lower cost and power consumption will be critical for data-center applications."

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