Introduction to CML Technology

CML™ is a technology that I plan to discuss in many more postings.

CML stands for Chirp Managed Laser. CML technology was originally developed by a company called Azna which Finisar acquired in 2007. The original team remains largely intact and we are continuing to develop this technology in our Wilmington, MA facility.

One of the key advantages of CML technology is that it has extremely good dispersion properties over fiber. For example, Finisar has developed an XFP that is dispersion tolerant to over 200km of SMF at 10Gb/s. At OFC this year, we also published a post-deadline paper showing the results of some testing where we were able to make an SFP+ at 10Gb/s run without dispersion compensation over 360km of fiber. Of course, this 360km SFP+ is not a real product, only a lab experiment, but it puts into light some of the awesome capabilities of this technology.

We are developing several flavors of CML transmitters (including TOSA and butterfly packages) in our Wilmington, MA facility, and all of these will be manufactured in our Shanghai facility. Many of those will end-up in Finisar modules.

If you have any questions or thoughts about Finisar’s CML technology, feel free to comment here.

OFC Wrap-Up and the Difference Between CFP and CXP

OFC is over. This concludes one of the most grueling weeks for a marketing guy in this industry!

To steal the words of one of our engineers from Sydney, OFC 2009 could be seen “as a great planning meeting for 100G.” Examples of this are as follows:

1. The introduction of the CFP form factor for 100Gb/s and 40Gb/s applications.

2. A very nice debut for CXP. Note that CXP is a very different form factor to the CFP mentioned above – don’t let the fact that the names look similar fool you. I have added more details on the differences between these form factors below. There were multiple companies (including Finisar) at OFC that appear to be backing CXP for clustering and high-speed computing applications, and I believe this bodes well for CXP’s adoption.

3. And most certainly, lots and lots of discussion about 100G line-side and all the different technical solutions, system architectures, and development options to get products to market.

Both CXP and CFP are pluggable form factors incorporating transmitter and receiver capabilities, and can be used at data rates up to 100G+. However, that is the extent of their similarities.

These form factors are very different in size. The CXP cage footprint on a host board is roughly 45mm (length) x 27mm (width). By contrast, the footprint of the CFP rail assembly is about 120mm (length) x 86mm (width).

CXP is a form factor targeted at extremely dense high-speed parallel interconnections for 12xQDR InfiniBand (120Gb/s) applications, multimode 100GE applications, and proprietary protocols for inter-chassis links. It includes up to 12 transmit and receive channels in a very small package. With each channel running at 10Gb/s, this form factor can enable a front panel density 9x greater than that of an SFP+ running at 10Gb/s. It is designed to be used with parallel multi-mode fiber ribbons and would typically be used for applications up to 100 meters. CXP is currently being standardized by the Infiniband Trade Association (IBTA).

By contrast, CFP is a highly flexible form factor for 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s applications. The flexibility will come from the fact that many different types of data rates, protocols and link lengths can be supported by this single form factor. This will make it easy for our customers to design systems that can ultimately incorporate things like 40GbE, 100GbE, OC-768/STM-256, and OTU3 over different media types including both multimode and single mode fiber and over varying link distances. The CFP is a multi-source agreement with Finisar, Opnext and Sumitomo being the 3 founding members .

For more coverage of OFC 2009, check out these videos from Lightwave Channel and Lightreading TV.

Finisar Technology Highlights at OFC

This marks the 17th year of the OFC/NFOEC exhibition and conference. Finisar is proud to say that we have participated in this show since its inauguration. Each year we attempt to raise the bar a little higher to provide technology demonstrations that exemplify Finisar as an innovator and market leader in the optical communications industry. This year we have several technology demonstrations in our booth including:

- The first public demonstration of a working 120Gb/s link over a CXP-based 12x10G active optical cable as well as the display of a new 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s CFP pluggable transceiver form factor, announced just this week by the CFP MSA

- A 16x Fibre Channel short wave SFP+ transceiver operating over 150 meters of OM3 fiber designed for both telecom and datacom applications. This module provides superior power dissipation and performance and includes components that leverage Finisar’s vertical integration synergies.

- A 40Gb/s DWDM RZ-DQPSK 300pin MSA optical transponder designed for metro core, regional, and long-haul networks. This transponder can be designed into the same line-cards as Finisar’s NRZ-DPSK 300pin transponder as a compatible ‘drop in’ option.

- A family of reconfigurable optical processors called WaveShaper that enable highly flexible wavelength switching and filtering critical for DWDM system and component testing, optical pulse shaping and control, and general optics research and development.

These demos span the breadth of our business – from high-speed links for datacenter and high performance clustering applications, to storage networking applications, to long-haul tunable applications. In short, we hope we have something for everybody. If you happen to be at the show, come by our booth #1734 anytime for a live viewing.

Of course, you can drop me a line here if you’d like to share any cool or interesting technologies you’ve seen at OFC this week.