Kaiam to Demo highest density 400G transceiver
LightScale2 platform used for eight lane single mode 400G PAM4 in a QSFP-DD package
Kaiam, a manufacturer of data centre optical transceivers, will demonstrate what it believes is the industry's highest density 8-lane single-mode 400G transceiver in a QSFP-DD form factor at OFC 2018. The transceiver is based on the LightScale2 architecture, which is also used in Kaiam's XQX5000 series of 100GBASE-CWDM4 QSFP28 pluggables.
According to the company, the simplified, flattened, non-hermetic LightScale2 platform supports the dense requirements of eight lanes of 50G PAM4 in a QSFP-DD package with excellent signal integrity and thermal performance.
The LightScale2 platform is optimised for high-volume, low-cost manufacturing and flexibly supports both 4-lane and 8-lane 200G and 400G transceiver variants, including 400G-LR8/FR8, 400G-FR4, 2x100G-LR4, 2x100G-CWDM4, 2x100G-4WDM-10, 200G-FR4, and 2x200G-FR4. These can be supported in either QSFP-DD or OSFP packages.
The platform can further extend to future 800G solutions, and even beyond pluggables to Kaiam's innovative Co-Packaged Photonics Interconnect (CoPPhI).
"As capacity and density requirements increase in the data centre, our MEMS-based PLC approach further outperforms traditional approaches," commented Bardia Pezeshki, CEO. "At OFC 2018, we are demonstrating a transceiver that has four times the bandwidth of the previous generation in roughly the same QSFP form factor, highlighting the bandwidth and density scalability of Kaiam's technology."
"We're seeing market need for 400G QSFP-DD transceivers in 2019, but uncertainty and skepticism about whether transceiver vendors can deliver cost-effective solutions at scale with the high speeds needed per lane and the desired reach. Our ability to offer a simple 8-channel 400G solution in advance of the more complex 4-channel electronics, with the full 10km reach, gives the customers faster and easier access to 400G in the desired compact form factor," commented Jeremy Dietz, VP of Global sales and marketing.
The LightScale2 platform uses Kaiam's Optical Wire Bond (OWB) hybrid optical integration, and SCOTS PLCs. OWB harnesses MEMS to enable hybrid optical integration of technologies with high optical coupling efficiency, high parallelism, compactness, robustness, and low cost.
Kaiam's PLCs provide transceiver optical functions such as wavelength mux/demux, power splitting, and mode size conversion.
