News: Optoelectronics
12 March 2020
Broadex sampling 400G QSFP-DD DR4 transceiver based on silicon photonics
Optoelectronic component maker Broadex Technologies Co Ltd of Jiaxing, China (which has R&D and production facilities in Shanghai and Chengdu as well as in Edinburgh, UK) is sampling high-performance 400G QSFP-DD DR4 transceivers, in both 500m and 2km variants, based on a new silicon photonics (SiPh) platform.
Picture: Broadex’s 400G QSFP-DD DR4 SiPh module.
The modules use SiPh chips that integrate a number of active and passive optoelectronic components, 3D packaging technology and 7nm digital signal processing (DSP) chips. Packaged with proprietary low-loss optical coupling techniques, the modules feature what is claimed to be excellent signal quality and channel consistency with very low bit error rate of 10-9 without forward error correction (FEC) and TDECQ (Transmission Dispersion and Eye Closure Quaternary) as low as 0.6dB. The Broadex modules are said to be uniquely suited to enable data-center operators to address increasing bandwidth demand by upgrading 100G-centric network to 400G.
“Broadex has been working with industry-leading partners for the past year to develop a 400G SiPh transceiver that offers superb product performance and improved yield to enable high-volume production,” says CEO Dr Wei Zhu. “Results obtained so far, including live interoperability tests, indicate that we are on the right path to provide data-center customers with a very cost-effective product to support their growing bandwidth demand,” he adds. “400G EML-based solutions have been challenged to meet the volume expectations, which has become a constraint on the evolution of data-center networks toward higher-bandwidth interconnects. With the development of SiPh technology and its inherent potential in volume manufacturing, we expect our SiPh modules will become the preferred solution.”
Broadex’s 400G SiPh transceivers are available for sampling now and are expected to begin volume production in second-half 2020.
