Friday, December 23, 2011 at 10:41AM Altera has been showcasing a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip with optical interfaces. The 'optical FPGA' prototype makes use of parallel optical interfaces from Avago Technologies.
Altera's Stratix IV FPGA showing the two optical interfaces
Friday, May 27, 2011 at 11:12AM Briefing: Optical Interconnect
Part 1: FPGAs
Programmable logic chip vendor Altera is developing FPGAs with optical interfaces. But is there a need for such technology and how difficult will it be to develop?
FPGAs with optical interfaces promise to simplify high-speed interfacing between and within telecom and datacom systems. Such fibre-based FPGAs, once available, could also trigger novel system architectures. But not all FPGA vendors believe optical-enabled FPGAs’ time has come, arguing that cost and reliability hurdles must be overcome for system vendors to embrace the technology
“One of the advantages of using optics is that you haven’t got to throw your backplanes away as [interface] speeds increase.”
Craig Davis, Altera
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 3:18PM Avago Technologies is now delivering to customers its 120 Gigabit-per-second optical engine devices.
Such a parallel optics design offer several advantages when used on a motherboard. It offer greater flexibility when cooling since traditional optics are normally in pluggable slots at the card edge, furthest away from the fans. Such optical engines also simplify high-speed signal routing and electromagnetic interference issues since fibre is used rather than copper traces.
Figure 1: Fourteen 120Gbps MiniPods on a board. Source: Avago Technologies
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 10:57AM Avago Technologies, Finisar and Opnext spoke to Gazettabyte about market trends and their recent OFC/NFOEC announcements.
More compact transceiver designs at 10, 40 and 100 Gigabit, advancements in reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology and parallel optical engine developments were all in evidence at this year’s OFC/NFOEC show held in Los Angeles in March.
“MSAs are designed by committee, and when you have a committee you throw away innovation and you throw away time-to-market”
Victor Krutul, Avago Technologies
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 10:46AM Transceiver feature: Part 1
System vendors may adore optical transceivers but there is a concern about how multi-source agreements originate.
Optical transceiver form factors, defined through multi-source agreements (MSAs), benefit equipment vendors by ensuring there are several suppliers to choose from. No longer must a system vendor develop its own or be locked in with a supplier.
“Personally, the MSA is the worst thing that has happened to the optical industry”
Marek Tlaka, Luxtera
