News: Optoelectronics
27 October 2022
POET unveils 800G & 1.6T optical engines for hyperscale data centers
POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — a designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for the data-center and telecom markets — is to use directly modulated lasers (DMLs) with integrated drivers in its transmit optical engines and high-speed photodiodes and integrated transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) in its receive optical engines to enable low-power, cost-efficient and highly scalable 800G and 1.6T pluggable transceivers for hyperscale data centers.
Working with what’s described as a market-leading designer and manufacturer of lasers, POET’s optical engines will be the industry’s first implementation of DMLs at these data rates, it is reckoned. POET will use the DMLs for its modulator-free design of its 400G transmit engine. Its small size and chip-on-board design will allow 800G and 1.6T designs to easily fit in an industry-standard 1.6T OSFP-XD form factor. DML technology has a proven track record of enabling high-volume transceiver deployments at every generation of speeds in hyperscale data centers. The 100G PAM4 DML passively integrated on the POET optical engine not only addresses existing 400G solutions at mass volume but also enables future intra-data-center interconnects as the industry moves to higher speeds.
“POET’s optical engines are ‘photonic chiplets’, unique to POET, which enable a scalable, elegant solution to module design that can extend the use of pluggable transceivers in data centers to 1.6T and even 3.2T,” says chairman & CEO Dr Suresh Venkatesan. “Extending pluggables to these speeds with industry-standard form factors was previously thought to be impossible but, because of the small size and extent of integration of devices in our optical engines, data-center customers will have more flexibility in network design than ever before,” he adds. “As we continue to integrate more devices on our platform we build more value into our optical engines, increase transceiver module performance, reduce power and cost, and provide unparalleled levels of flexibility for data-center customers.”
POET says that pluggable transceiver customers will benefit from its proven optical engine platform with chip-scale assembly, monolithically integrated multiplexer/demultiplexer and passive alignments for use in 400G, 800G and 1.6T FR4 modules. The optical engine solutions will simplify the transceiver design and eliminate the need for cumbersome and costly active alignments, it adds.
POET expects to start sampling 800G/1.6T optical engines in first-half 2023.
