Sep 19 2016
Luxtera, Inc., the global leader in silicon photonics, today announced that the company has shipped more than one million Silicon Photonic Parallel Single Mode fiber 4-lane (PSM4) transceiver products. Its patented technology blends long reach capabilities of single mode fiber with low cost transceivers. This combination is critical for the cost effective scaling of cloud computing data centers.
"This is a huge milestone for the optics industry and an exciting achievement for Luxtera," said Greg Young, President and CEO of Luxtera. "With over 1 million units deployed, sweeping design wins, and 100Gbps PSM4 shipping in 100K+ volumes, it is clear that our products are at the center of the industry's $5 billion optical super cycle. Passing this milestone signals that our customers have embraced our vision, including volume orders for solutions that offer long reach and low cost with best in class performance."
A critical component of driving cost effective optics inside the data center was the introduction of Parallel Single Mode (PSM) fiber optic solutions. Luxtera was the first to recognize this application and has led the standardization efforts to allow multivendor interoperability of PSM4. Luxtera was a founding member and drafter of the 100G-PSM4 Multi Supplier Agreement (MSA) in 2014, the first standard to enable silicon photonics interoperability with legacy DML Optical modules for PSM4 fiber without compromising the cost benefits of silicon photonics. This widely accepted MSA has the support of dozens of companies with PSM4 product offerings and is being deployed at scale by the major cloud computing operators. Luxtera has continued to drive further adoption of PSM4 for higher data rates, and has been standardized in IEEE 802.3bs, 200GBase-DR4 and 400GBase-DR4 specifications, creating a seamless migration path to 400G.
Each Luxtera 100G PSM4 optical transceiver product includes four independently operating transmitter and receiver channels, integrating high-speed phase modulators, photodetectors, waveguides, grating couplers, high-speed electrical retimers, and integrated control circuitry, powered by a single integrated laser. These components combine into a fully integrated silicon photonics chipset or PSM4 optical engine with no additional external elements required. Luxtera has now shipped over 1 million PSM4 transceiver products and has a broad and growing customer base including major cloud datacenter operators, system OEMs, HPC operators, and many additional users.
As part of a global tour to mark the 1M achievement, Luxtera's Vice President of Engineering Peter De Dobbelaere, PhD, will be presenting on datacenter photonics at the 4th Optical Interconnect in Data Centers EU-Symposium during the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Düsseldorf, Germany this week.