Gazettabyte sponsorship for 2012

Gazettabyte is delighted to announce that the following founder backing companies of the online publication have agreed to renew their sponsorship:

ADVA Optical Networking, Ciena, ECI Telecom, Finisar, Infinera, LightCounting, Opnext and u²t Photonics.

That nearly all of the founding sponsors have agreed to renew is great confirmation about the site and the stories and features it publishes.

Gazettabyte is also delighted to welcome three new sponsors:

 Cisco Systems, business information and networking service provider, Layer123, and Transmode.

Click to read more ...

100 Gigabit 'unstoppable'

A Q&A with Andrew Schmitt (@aschmitt), directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.

"40Gbps has even less value in the metro than in the core"

Andrew Schmitt, Infonetics Research

Click to read more ...

FPGA transceiver speed hikes bring optics to the fore

Despite rapid increases in the transceiver speeds of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), the transition to optical has begun.

FPGA vendors Xilinx and Altera have increased their on-chip transceiver speeds four-fold since 2005, from 6.5Gbps to 28Gbps. But signal integrity issues and the rapid decline in reach associated with higher speed means optics is becoming a relevant option.

Click to read more ...

Is wireless becoming a valid alternative to fixed broadband?

Are wireless technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX2 closing the gap on fixed broadband? 

A recent blog by The Economist discussed how Long Term Evolution (LTE) is coming to the rescue of one of its US correspondents, located 5km from the DSL cabinet and struggling to get a decent broadband service. 

Peak rates are rarely achieved: the mobile user needs to be very close to a base station and a large spectrum allocation is needed.

Mark Heath, Unwired Insights

Click to read more ...

2012: A year of unique change

The third and final part on what CEOs, executives and industry analysts expect during the new year, and their reflections on 2011.

Karen Liu, principal analyst, components telecoms, Ovum  @girlgeekanalyst 

"We’ve entered the next decade for real: the mobile world is unified around LTE and moving to LTE Advanced, complete with small cells and heterogenous networks including Wi-Fi."

Click to read more ...

The CFP4 optical module to enable Terabit blades

The next-generation CFP modules - the CFP2 and CFP4 - promise to double and double again the number of 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) optical module interfaces on a blade.

Using the CFP4, up to 16, 100Gbps modules will fit on a blade, a total line rate of 1.6 Terabits-per-second (Tbps). With a goal of a 60W total module power budget per blade, that equates to 27Gbps/W. In comparison, the power-efficient SFP+ achieves 10Gbps/W.

 

Source: Gazettabyte, Xilinx

Click to read more ...

Altera unveils its optical FPGA prototype

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.

Combining the FPGA with optics extends the reach of the chip's transceivers to up to 100m. Such a device, once commercially available, will be used to connect high-speed electronics on a line card without requiring exotic printed circuit board (PCB) materials. An optical FPGA will also be used to link equipment such as Ethernet switches in the data centre.

"It is solving a problem the industry is going to face," says Craig Davis, product marketing manager at Altera. "As you go to faster bit-rate transceivers, the losses on the PCB become huge."

Click to read more ...