16 June 2011

Production order for GigOptix’s HXT/R4 chip-set for 40G AOC

GigOptix Inc of Palo Alto, CA, USA, which designs modulator drivers, laser drivers and transimpedance amplifier (TIA) ICs based on III-V materials as well as polymer electro-optic modulators, says that a Taiwanese optical engine manufacturer has entered production with its HXT/R4 chip-set for use in a 40G quad small-form-factor pluggable (QSFP) active optical cable (AOC) application.

GigOptix’s HXT/R4 chip-set has been designed to support multiple applications ranging from 5Gb/s to 10Gb/s per channel. The firm says that the feature set of its HXT/R4 family enables users to optimize the trade-off between power dissipation and performance of the optical link. This has been demonstrated by transmitting data over a 100m link with less than 100mW of total power dissipation. Moreover, GigOptix says that it unique architecture enables customers to examine the detailed status of their product after the fiber has been attached. This functionality allows them to more easily test and monitor the operation of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and photo-diode (PD) devices within the optical engine, leading to significant cost savings it is claimed.

“Our HXT/R4 chip-set will be key to enabling 40G optical engines for the high-volume supercomputing and consumer markets,” believes VP of global sales Jay de la Barre, adding that GigOptix’s is working with pioneering companies using innovative silicon bench technology, along with its VCSEL driver and receiver array chip-set, to take their solutions to production.

The HXT/R4 chip-set is designed for use in Infiniband AOC, SNAP12 and QSFP optical modules while serving the fast-growing markets of high-performance computing optical interconnects, switch and router optical backplanes and the emerging 40G and 100G Ethernet standards.

Tags: GigOptix

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