- Ciena is to buy optical interconnect start-up Nubis Communications for $270 million.
- The deal covers optical and copper interconnect technology for data centres
Ciena has announced its intention to buy optical engine specialist Nubis Communications for $270 million. If the network is the computer, Nubis' optical engine and copper integrated circuit (IC) expertise will help Ciena better stitch together AI's massive compute fabric.
Source: Ciena
Ciena signalled its intention to target the data centre earlier this year at the OFC show when it showcased its high-speed 448-gigabit serialiser-deserialiser IC technology and coherent lite modem. Now, Ciena has made a move for start-up Nubis, which plays at the core of AI data centres.
"Ciena’s expertise in high-speed components is relevant to 400G per lane Ethernet transceivers, but they never sold any products to this market," says Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting. "Nubis offers them an entry point with several designs and customer engagements."
With the deal, Ciena is extending its traditional markets of wide area networks (WAN), metro, and short-reach dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to include AI networking opportunities. These opportunities include scale-across networks, where AI workloads are shared across multiple data centres, something Ciena can address, to now scale-out and scale-up networks for AI clusters in the data centre.
Puma optical engine
Nubis has developed two generations of compact optical engines for near-package optics (NPO) and co-package optics (CPO) applications. Its first-generation engine operates at 100 gigabits per second (Gbps), while its second, dubbed Puma, operates at 200 Gbps.
Nubis's optical engine philosophy is based on escaping the optical channels from the surface of the optical engine, not its edge. The start-up also matches the number of optical channels to the electrical ones. The optical engine can be viewed as a sieve: data from the input channels flow through the chip and emerge in the same number of channels at the output. The engine acts as a two-way gateway, with one side handling electrical signals and the other, optical ones.
The Puma optical engine uses 16 channels in each direction, 16 by 200Gbps electrical signals for a total of 3.2 terabits per second (Tbps), and 16 fibres, each fibre carrying 200Gbps of data in the form of a wavelength. Puma's total capacity is thus 6.4 terabits per second (Tbps). The engine also needs four external lasers to drive the optics, each laser feeding four channels or four fibres. The total fibre bundle of the device consists of 36 fibres: 32 for data (16 for receive and 16 for transmit), and four for the laser light sources.
Nubis is also a proponent of linear drive technology. Here, the advanced serdes on the adjacent semiconductor chip drives the optical engine, thereby avoiding the need for an on-engine digital signal processor (DSP) that requires power. The start-up has also developed a system-based simulator software tool that it uses to model the channel, from the transmitter to the receiver. The tool models not only the electrical and optical components within the channel but also the endpoints, such as the serdes.
Nitro
Nubis has an analogue IC team that designs its trans-impedance amplifiers (TIAs) and drivers used for the optical engine. The hardware compensates for channel impairments with low noise, high linearity, and at high speed. It is this channel simulator tool that Nubis used to optimise its optical engine, and to develop its second key technology, which Nubis calls Nitro —a chip that extends the reach of copper cabling.
"We use our linear optics learning and apply it to copper straight out of the gate, "said Peter Winzer, founder & CTO at Nubis, earlier this year. By using its end-to-end simulator tool, Nubis developed the Nitro IC, which extends the 1m reach of direct-attached copper to 4m using an active copper cable design. "We don't optimise the driver chip, we optimise the end-to-end system," says Winzer.
Nubis was also part of a novel design based on a vertical line card to shorten the trace length between an ASIC and pluggable modules.
Ciena's gain
The acquisition of Nubis places Ciena at the heart of the electrical-optical transition inside the data centre. Ciena will cover both options: copper and optical interconnect. Ciena will gain direct-drive technology expertise for electrical and optical interfaces, enabling scale-up, as well as optical engine technology for scale-out, adding to its coherent technology expertise.
Source: Ciena
Ciena's technologies will span coherent ultra-long-haul links all the way to AI accelerators, the heart of AI clusters. By combining Ciena's 448-gigabit serdes with Nubis's optical engine expertise, Ciena has a roadmap to develop 12.8Tbps and faster optical engines.
The acquisition places Ciena among new competitors that have chip and optical expertise and deliver co-packaged optics solutions alongside complex ICs such as Broadcom and Marvell.
The deal adds differentiation from Ciena's traditional system vendor competitors, such as Cisco/ Acacia and Nokia. Huawei is active in long-haul optical and makes AI clusters. Ciena will also compete with existing high-speed optical players, including co-packaged optics specialists Ayar Labs and Ranovus, microLED player Avicena, and optical/IC fabric companies such as LightMatter and Celestial AI.
"Ciena will be a unique supplier in the co-packaged optics/near-packaged optics/active copper cabling data centre interconnect market," says Daryl Inniss, Omdia's thought lead of optical components and advanced fibre. "The other suppliers either have multiple products in the intra data centre market, like Broadcom and Nvidia, or they are interconnect-focused start-ups. These suppliers should all wonder what Ciena will do next inside the data centre."
Ciena will enhance its overall expertise in chips, optics, and signal processing with the Nubis acquisition. It will also put Ciena in front of key processor players and different hyperscaler engineering teams, which drive next-generation AI systems.
Ciena will also have all the necessary parts for the various technologies, regardless of the evolving timescales associated with the copper-to-optical transition within AI systems. Ciena will add direct-detect technology and copper interconnect. On the optical side, it has coherent optical expertise, now coupled with near-package optics and co-packaged optics.
Nubis' gain
Nubis' 50-plus staff get a successful exit. The start-up was founded in 2020. Nubis will become a subsidiary of Ciena.
Nubis will be joining a much bigger corporate entity with deep expertise and pockets. Ciena has a good track record with its mergers. Think Nortel at the system level and Blue Planet, a software acquisition. Now the Nubis deal will bring Ciena firmly inside the data centre.
"This is a great deal for Nubis," says Kozlov. "Congratulations to their team."
What next?
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Ciena expects the deal to start adding to its revenues from 2028, requiring Ciena and Nubis to develop products and deliver design wins in the data centre.
"Given the breadth of Ciena's capabilities, its deep pockets, and products like its data centre out-of-band (DCOM) measurement product, router, and coherent transceivers, one can imagine that Ciena would offer more than co-packaged optics/ near-packaged optics/ active copper cabling inside the data centre," says Inniss.