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
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 4:27PM Luxtera has detailed a 4x28 Gigabit optical transceiver chip. The silicon photonics company is aiming the device at embedded applications such as system backplanes and high-performance computing (HPC). The chip is also being used by Molex for 100 Gigabit active optical cables. Molex bought Luxtera's active optical cable business in January 2011.
“Do I want to invest in a copper backplane for a single generation or do I switch over now to optics and have a future-proof three-generation chassis?”
Marek Tlalka, Luxtera
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 3:35PM The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) has announced a new roadmap for the low latency bi-directional link. What was Eight Data Rate InfiniBand will now be known as Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) and be upgraded from 20Gbps to 26Gbps per channel. EDR will deliver a 104Gbps data rate in a four-channel InfiniBand (4x) implementation and 312Gbps when used as a 12-channel (12x) interface.
“We can already demonstrate in silicon a 30Gbps transmitter."
Marek Tlalka, Luxtera
EDR, FDR, HDR, IBTA, Infiniband, LightCounting, Luxtera, NDR, technologies in gazettabits Print Article Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 8:59AM Kotura has detailed a compact, low-power silicon-based optical modulator; an important building block to enable dense on-chip optical interconnects. The modulator operates at up to 11Gbit/s, consumes 0.5mW and has an area of 1000µm2.
This is the silicon photonic start-up’s first announced modulator. The design has been developed in conjunction with Sun Microsystems as part of the DAPRA Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communications (UNIC) programme.
An image of the modulator and a cross-section diagram of the ring waveguide. Source: Kotura
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
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 9:07AM Behind the numbers
CIR’s report key findings
The global market for active optical cable (AOC) is forecast to grow to US $1.5bn by 2014, with the linking of datacenter equipment being the largest single market valued at $835m. Other markets for the cabling technology include digital signage, PC interconnect and home theatre.
