Oclaro dual-rate 100G CFP2 enters volume production

Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) says its dual-rate 100G MSA-compliant CFP2 LR4 optical transceiver, which is fully interoperable with its 100G CFP LR4 transceiver, has joined that module in volume production.

Oclaro now offers a second-generation CFP LR4 transceiver and a CFP2 LR4 MSA-compliant transceiver. The two products interoperate at both 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) and OTU-4 formats in accordance with the respective standards.

Furthermore, the CFP2 transceiver has successfully passed interoperability testing with the Xilinx Virtex-7 H580T FPGA for OTU-4 based on the OIF CEI-28G-VSR board interface specification, according to Oclaro. Both the Oclaro CFP and CFP2 LR4 modules have now passed testing for both data rates.

The company says that a fully interoperable pair of CFP and CFP2 LR4 transceivers offer network equipment manufacturers the flexibility to rapidly and easily capitalize on the smaller form factor and lower power consumption of the CFP2, while offering their customers an attractive upgrade path from deployed equipment with CFP cages. This capability enables them to increase system front panel bandwidth with higher module density and/or to lower system power consumption per 100G interface.

“Xilinx and Oclaro have successfully achieved interoperability between the Xilinx Virtex-7 H580T FPGA and the Oclaro 100G CFP2 LR4 optical module showing an error free connection at 28.0 Gbps," said Gilles Garcia, director of wired communications at Xilinx. “With this achievement, together with previously demonstrated interoperability at 25.7 Gbps, system OEMs designing transport, networking, and data center applications can now realize 100 Gigabit Ethernet and 100G OTL4.4 applications with lower cost and power, enabling either more efficient or higher density network line cards.”

As the CFP MSA standard continues its growth as the form factor of choice for adoption in many 100G enterprise and data center applications, Oclaro says it is well positioned to help customers lead this next phase of high-speed optical networking. Approximately 30 customers have already qualified or are in the process of qualifying Oclaro’s 100G pluggable LR4 transceiver modules, the company adds.

The second-generation CFP and CFP2 transceivers are available now.

Oclaro will meet with customers at ECOC, the largest European optical communications event from September 23-25, 2013 in London, UK Meeting Room MR3.

For more information on transceivers and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.