OFC Week in Brief: Tower Semiconductor and Teramount Partner: 03/10/23

Tower Semiconductor and Teramount established a collaboration based on Teramount’s “PhotonicPlug” technology and Tower’s silicon photonic “Bump-ready” wafers, which combine Tower’s high-volume PH18 silicon photonic technology with features that allow the simultaneous connection of a large number of fibers to the chip. This connection simplifies assembly into a final high-speed data transport solution for data centers and telecom networks, as well as applications in AI and sensors. The technology enables scalable silicon photonics packaging, high-yield fiber assembly, and compatibility with high-volume semiconductor manufacturing lines.

SAN DIEGO — The QSFP-DD Multi Source Agreement revealed plans to develop a new specification extending the bandwidth of the form factor to 1.6 Tbit/s. The specification will leverage the industry’s focus on next-generation systems that will use 200 Gbit/s serial PAM4 SerDes technology currently under development. The specification will maintain the form factor’s eight lanes to provide an aggregate bandwidth capacity of 1.6 Tbit/s. The 1.6 Tbit/s module port will maintain backward compatibility with the entire family of QSFP and QSFP-DD modules and cables.

SAN DIEGO — Go!Foton, a provider of optical networking and fiber connectivity platforms, entered into a collaboration with Molex, an electronics and connectivity company. The collaboration seeks to facilitate development and production of tools to enable customers to manage the pace of fiber densification. The hallmark of the new alliance will be the blending of Molex’s strategy for deploying the very small form factor (VSFF) connectors and VersaBeam interconnects with field deployment of NEMO, Go!Foton’s patch panel designed to accommodate optical networking installations of any density.

SAN DIEGO — Avicena Tech Corp. partnered with ams OSRAM to develop high-volume manufacturing of GaN microLED arrays for its LightBundle communication architecture. The Avicena LightBundle architecture is based on arrays of GaN LED micro-emitters that can be integrated onto high-performance CMOS ICs. The partnership addresses the need to scale network architectures to facilitate next-generation computing power by increasing bandwidth and reducing power consumption.

The POET O-Band LightBar solution will soon incorporate Vanguard Automation’s Micro-Lenses, advancing scalability for data centers and the AI-ML market. Courtesy of POET Technologies.

TORONTO — Optical networking company POET Technologies and Vanguard Automation, a developer of 3D-nanoprinted photonic wire bond and micro-lens technology, are collaborating to enable the integration of micro-lenses on the POET Optical Interposer to maximize coupling efficiency while maintaining POET’s wafer-level passive assembly process.

KYOTO, Japan — Network technology company I-PEX and Teramount will collaborate to advance silicon photonics optical detachable connectivity for data centers for other high-speed datacom and telecom applications. The collaboration between I-PEX and Teramount will provide a solution of detachable fiber-to-chip connectivity based on Teramount’s self-aligning optics technology and I-PEX’s ultraprecision plug-and-holder systems.

Detachable photonic plug for co-packaged optics serviceable fiber assembly. Courtesy of Teramount.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Open XR Forum demonstrated long-haul point-to-point transmission between QSFP56-DD coherent transceivers over 1400 km at 400 Gbit/s using 16QAM modulation, as well as error-free performance at 300 Gbit/s using 8QAM modulation over a span of 2495 km. In addition to demonstrating long-reach performance equal to or greater than current state-of-the-art transceivers, this is reportedly the first published demonstration of an advanced management method that enables management and control of optical transceiver functions independently from the host equipment.

CAMARILLO, Calif. — Semtech Corp. demonstrated a 200G per lane optical transmission link enabled by Semtech’s FiberEdge 200G PAM4 PMDs and Broadcom’s latest DSP PHY. In collaboration with Keysight Technologies, Semtech and Broadcom demonstrated Semtech’s state-of-the-art FiberEdge 200G PAM4 EML Driver and TIA and Broadcom’s 5-nm 112GBd PAM4 DSP platform at the OFC 2023 exhibition held March 7-9.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Keysight Technologies and McGill University demonstrated 1.2 Tbit/s and 1.6 Tbit/s O-band coherent transmissions operating over 10 km using distributed feedback lasers for both the carrier and local oscillator. The demonstration system consisted of Keysight’s new M8199B 256 GSa/s Arbitrary Waveform Generator that delivers 75 GHz bandwidth in combination with a thin-film lithium niobate I/Q modulator with 100 GHz bandwidth and a 110 GHz 256 GSa/s Keysight Infiniium UXR-Series Oscilloscope.

VIENNA — Anritsu Corp. and KYOCERA Corp. completed a successful PCI Express 5.0 (PCIe 5.0) optical transmission test using Anritsu’s Signal Quality Analyzer-R MP1900A and KYOCERA’s on-board optics module. The test converted a PCIe 5.0 (32 Gbit/s transmission speed) electrical signal into an optical signal using an end-point Add-in Card.

SAN DIEGO — RANOVUS demonstrated interoperability between AMD Versal adaptive SoCs with the co-packaged Odin 800G direct-drive optical engine and third party 800G DR8+ retimed pluggable modules. RANOVUS’ Odin is a low latency, high density, protocol agnostic, and standards-based optical engine that delivers high optical interconnect bandwidth that is both power and cost efficient.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Infinera delivered a 400 Gbps single-wavelength transmission using its ICE-X 400G QSFP-DD intelligent coherent pluggable solution across 2400 km of Corning’s TXF optical fiber. The distance achieved during this transmission is reportedly double the previous record. The demonstration featured Infinera’s ICE-X 400G intelligent coherent pluggable solution hosted in UfiSpace’s 400G disaggregated core and edge routers across 2400 km of Corning’s TXF fiber, an ultra-low-loss, silica-core fiber with large effective area.