Optomind, II-VI, MACOM and MultiLane collaborate to demo 200G QSFP56 AOC

In collaboration with II-VI Inc, MACOM Technology Solutions Inc and MultiLane SAL, Optomind Inc of Suwon, South Korea - which develops and mass produces active optical cable (AOC) products - demonstrated 200Gb/s (200G) quad small-form-factor pluggable (QSFP) 56 AOC in MultiLane’s booth at the Optical Networking and Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC 2019) in San Diego (5-7 March).

Advancing from 100G to 400G drastically transforms the ecosystem of data centers and data-center interconnects, says the firm. With 100G in wide-scale deployment today and 400G not yet at mainstream cost structures, cloud data centers are eager to take advantage of opportunities to bridge the throughput gap and keep pace with the demand for data, it adds. The 200G short-reach AOC is now applicable to high-end artificial imtelligence (AI) servers as well as high-performance computing (HPC), and serves as an intermediate step between 100G and 400G.

II-VI’s 8-element vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays can be modulated at 28Gb/s using non-return to zero (NRZ) modulation or at 56Gb/s using 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) to achieve a combined 200 or 400Gb/s, respectively, over short-reach multi-mode links.

Leveraging MACOM’s four-channel 53Gbps PAM4 analog CDR, linear TIA and VCSEL driver chip-set, Optomind’s optical engine technology enables a 200G QSFP56 AOC to operate for 100m OM3 multi-mode fiber which includes an optimal architecture design to enhance signal integrity at the receiver by employing a custom plastic injection mold and an exclusive optical assembly.

Customer sampling of new 200G QSFP56 AOCs will begin in third-quarter 2019.

Optomind says that its next target is a short-reach in-connectivity solution for hyperscale data-center top-of-rack (ToR) interconnects between switch and server by means of the high-density form factors QSFPD-DD and OSFP.

To address the needs of the evolving data-center MultiLane has developed a variety of test solutions that can characterize the high-speed optical and electrical interfaces from 10G to 400G. At OFC MultiLane demonstrated its new ML1016D-CR 53 GBaud PAM4 Optical Clock Recovery module for 100G Lambda testing.

Tags: AOC

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Visit: www.optomindinc.com