News

20 March 2009

 

Emcore awarded patent for active optical cable technology

Emcore Corp of Albuquerque, NM, USA, which manufactures components and subsystems for the broadband, fiber-optic, and solar power markets, has received a patent award for its active optical cable technology. US patent no. 7,494,287 B2 covers all fiber-optic active cable applications and is believed to be fundamental to current and future market segments and platforms related to data communications links between information systems, says the firm.

Existing high-speed data communications networks use optical fiber cables for data transmission between information system units such as computer clusters, mass data storage devices, and routers. Typical systems communicate via electrical host adapters that, when connected to electro-optical transceivers mated with an optical fiber cable, enable high bandwidth, low latency, lightweight and improved airflow data networks.

According to the Active Optical Cables Market Study 2009 by Information Gatekeepers Inc, overall cumulative cable revenue from 2009 through 2013 is expected to exceed $8.5bn, representing a cumulative total of 1040 million meters of cables for the five years.

“Emcore previously announced supporting IBM’s use of 55 miles of our active optical fiber for the world’s first petaflop supercomputer,” says Stephen Krasulick, executive VP & general manager of Emcore’s Fiber Optics Products division. “For next-generation 40Gb/s and greater bandwidth applications we expect active optical cables to replace copper cables and become the dominate connect solution,” he adds.

The firm currently sells in high volume the Emcore Connects Cables (ECC) product platform for high-performance InfiniBand interconnects that operate at high-speed 20Gb/s data rates. It is also sampling next-generation 40Gb/s data rate cables to major OEMs.

Emcore is demonstrating the new 40Gb/s ECC at next week’s OFC/NFOEC Conference and Exposition in San Diego, CA (24-26 March). Emcore Connects Cables currently support 40Gb/s quad data rate (QDR), 20Gb/s double data rate (DDR) and 10Gb/s single data rate (SDR), and are available in lengths of 1-100m.

Search: Emcore Active optical cable

Visit: www.emcoreconnects.com