The chipset includes the SMI10021 10:4 mux/CMU and SMI10031 4:10 CDR/demux devices. Each uses 130-nm IBM 8HP bipolar complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) silicon germanium (SiGe) process technology.

The Theta-100G chipset operates at 4�25.0 Gbps to 28.3 Gbps (100�113 Gbps aggregate) and incorporates an integrated, dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) modulation precoder function.

OneChip Photonics (www.onechipphotonics.com), which is developing InP-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that monolithically integrate all of the functions of a transceiver in a single wafer-level device, has announced receipt of $19.5 million in funding. OneChip's potential cost advantages lie in two areas, says CEO Jim Hjartarson. First, the company's PIC technology requires only a single epitaxial growth step; the creation of the rest of the transceiver components and functions is just a matter of etching and photolithography, he says. These components and functions include all the active and passive elements required for a transceiver, he asserts: DFB laser, optically preamplified detector, wavelength splitter, spot-size converter, and various passives. The second cost reduction area derives from the fact that, since the transceiver components reside in a single integrated device, the optical assembly processes normally associated with transceivers are no longer necessary.

EMCORE Corp. (www.emcore.com) has received a patent award for its active optical cable technology. US Patent No. 7,494,287 B2, with broad claims, “covers all fiber-optic active cable applications,” according to the company. EMCORE believes the patent is fundamental to current and future market segments and platforms related to data communications links between information systems. The company acquired the product line derived from the patent from Intel.