News

23 June 2009

 

Finisar launches first 150Gb/s parallel active optical cable

At this week’s International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'09) in Hamburg, Germany, fiber-optic communications component and subsystem maker Finisar Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA is demonstrating the C.wire active optical cable (AOC), a 150Gb/s optical link for storage, data center, and high-performance computing connectivity. Based on the industry-standard CXP form factor, the C.wire uses fiber-optic technology to transmit parallel high-speed data in 100+Gb/s applications such as InfiniBand, 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE), and proprietary high-speed interconnections.

C.wire’s product offerings include a 12x12.5Gb/s cable for proprietary interconnects and a 12x10Gb/s cable for InfiniBand 12xQDR and 100GbE applications.

With the increase in I/O bandwidth required by next-generation CPUs, protocols such as InfiniBand and Ethernet need very high-speed connectivity solutions for data center architectures, says Finisar. Aggregation switches, stacked switches and meshed network topologies need to deploy cabling solutions that are beyond the bandwidth and distance limitations available in copper.

Finisar claims that C.wire provides the smallest footprint of any cable solution available for applications requiring data throughput of 100Gb/s and beyond. It transmits parallel 12x12.5Gb/s data bi-directionally over a multimode fiber (MMF) ribbon cable. Low power, small bend radius and high density (Gb/s per mm3) suit connectivity for growing data centers and HPC clusters.

“C.wire will drive data center connectivity to new levels,” says Alan Benner, senior technical staff member at IBM Corp and chair of the ElectroMechanical Working Group for the InfiniBand Trade Association. “With InfiniBand QDR 40Gb/s server connectivity available today and 120Gb/s coming soon, we need solutions like Finisar's active optical cables to drive higher-density switches at lower power,” he adds.

“With C.wire you can now get connections above 100Gb/s anywhere in the datacenter without worrying about whether you need copper or optics,” says Karen Liu, vice president at Ovum RHK. “Aside from operation simplicity, Finisar's innovation addresses these increasingly urgent issues as datacenters grow in both size and speed: power consumption, density and reach,” she adds.

“As evidenced in recent analyst reports by IGI and Lightcounting, active optical cables are quickly becoming the next-generation interconnects of choice for high-speed datacenter and HPC connectivity,” says Jan Meise, Finisar's director of strategic marketing. “C.wire represents the third member of Finisar's cable family and is a clear demonstration of our commitment to providing breakthrough cable technology that will ensure 100G computing connectivity as early as 2010.”

Search: Finisar

Visit: www.finisar.com/cables