Mar 19 2009
EMCORE Corporation (NASDAQ:EMKR), a leading provider of compound semiconductor-based components and subsystems for the broadband, fiber optic, satellite and terrestrial solar power markets, today announced that it has received a patent award for its Active Optical Cable technology. The new patent (US Patent No. 7,494,287 B2) with broad claims covers all fiber optic active cable applications and is believed to be fundamental to current and future market segments and platforms related to data communications links between information systems.
Today's high-speed data communications networks utilize optical fiber cables for data transmission between information system units such as computer clusters, mass data storage devices, and routers. Typical systems communicate via electrical host adapters that when connected to electro-optical transceivers mated with an optical fiber cable enable high bandwidth, low latency, lightweight and improved airflow data networks.
According to the Active Optical Cables Market Study 2009 by Information Gatekeepers Inc. the overall cumulative cable revenue from 2009 through 2013 is expected to exceed $8.5 billion. This represents a total of 1,040 million meter cables cumulative for the five years.
"EMCORE previously announced supporting IBM's use of 55 miles of our active optical fiber for the world's first petaflop supercomputer," said Stephen Krasulick, Executive Vice President and General Manager of EMCORE's Fiber Optics Products division. Krasulick added, "For next generation 40 Gb/s and greater bandwidth applications we expect active optical cables to replace copper cables and become the dominate connect solution."
The company currently sells in high volume the EMCORE Connects Cables (ECC) product platform for high-performance InfiniBand interconnects that operate at high-speed 20 Gb/s data rates and is sampling next generation 40 Gb/s data rate cables to major OEMs.
EMCORE is demonstrating the new 40 Gb/s ECC at the OFC/NFOEC Conference and Exposition on March 24-26 in San Diego, California. EMCORE Connects Cables currently support 40 Gb/s Quad Data Rate (QDR), 20 Gb/s Double Data Rate (DDR) and 10 Gb/s Single Data Rate (SDR) and are available in lengths from 1 to 100 meters.