ClariPhy claims shipment milestone for 40G coherent SOCs

System on chip (SoC) developer ClariPhy Communications, Inc. says it has shipped over 11,000 units of its LightSpeed 40G coherent SoC products into applications spanning long-haul, regional, metro, and submarine fiber-optic networks. The company believes this is the highest volume of coherent merchant silicon shipped by any supplier over all data rates.

ClariPhy has been shipping silicon for the long-haul 40G coherent market since 2011. Last September, the company expanded its product capabilities to address metro and regional markets (see “ClariPhy targets metro with 40G LightSpeed Coherent SoC”).

Carriers are transitioning to coherent technology because of its ease of deployment (lowering both capex and opex), high fiber capacity, and seamless upgradeability to next-generation terabit solutions. ClariPhy says its LightSpeed coherent SoCs address the industry's demand for bandwidth with low-power, cost-effective technology that can be rapidly deployed in high volume.

"The transition to coherent technology was slower than operators expected due to a limited supplier base and constrained capacity," said Daryl Inniss, vice-president and practice leader for components at Ovum. "ClariPhy's single-chip integration provided a platform to deliver low power and cost and thereby support volume coherent deployments. Ovum finds coherent has quickly gone from introductory to mainstream; it forecasts a nearly 40% volume compounded annual growth rate for 40G and 100G from 2012 to 2017 reflecting wide spread technology acceptance."

ClariPhy also claims it is the only supplier with the complete IP portfolio of mixed-signal and digital signal processing (DSP) technology required for multi-mode, multi-rate coherent designs. At OFC/NFOEC this week, ClariPhy will be involved in what it claims is the industry's first demonstration of the key mixed-signal building blocks for 100G coherent SoCs in 28-nm CMOS technology, carried out in partnership with Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (see “ClariPhy, Sumitomo Electric pair to demo 100G coherent CFP technology”).

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