News: Optoelectronics
1 June 2022
Source Photonics ships 2 millionth 28G EML laser chip
Source Photonics Inc of West Hills, CA, USA (which provides optical connectivity products for data centers, metro and access networks) says that it has now shipped more than 2 million 28G high-speed EML laser chips for data centers and optical transmission applications. Source Photonics began production shipments of 28G EMLs (externally modulated lasers) with its 10km QSFP28 100G LR4 products in first-quarter 2020, after successful introduction and qualification by many of the firm’s leading customers and partners throughout 2019.
Source Photonics is a first-to-market and first-to-scale provider of high-performance 100G QSFP28 LR4 transceivers using 28G EML laser chips, enabling data centers to increase their bit rate and lower their overall power consumption. The 28G EML chip is now widely used in many more NRZ and PAM4-based platforms, such as 400G LR8/ER8, 100G ER4/ZR4, 200G LR4/ER4 and 50G LR/ER etc.
Source Photonics says that the operational simplicity and reliability combined with the economic value proposition continues to drive the adoption of EML solutions in the market place. With over 2 million EMLs shipped to the field with zero field returns to date, the firm is investing in leading-edge technology for the transition to 800G/1.6T direct detection.
The expected strong growth of data traffic in hyperscale data centers and 5G wireless networks is driving increasing requirements for volume, reliability, cost and speed in EML laser chips. “Today’s announcement underlines our commitment and leadership in large-scale production capacity of high-speed EML chip and transceiver products,” says CEO John Wang. “Vertical integration remains Source Photonics’ core competitiveness. More than 90% transceiver products transition to use our own optics chips now, including the newest 800G products under pre-production,” he adds.
“Strong demand for 100/400G optics in mega data centers has been making headlines over the last three years, attracting many new suppliers and technologies,” comments Vladimir Kozlov, CEO & founder of LightCounting Market Research. “Source Photonics remains uniquely positioned to deliver its portfolio of 100G QSFP28 LR4 and higher-performance transceiver products by vertical integration, which allows for faster deployment of next-generation 100/400GbE optical solutions in enterprise, data-center and service provider networks.”
