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News

11 September 2007

 

First FP-based optical components for 10GBASE-LRM applications

Finisar Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA has announced availability of what it claims are the industry’s only transmitter and receiver optical subassembly pairs (TOSA/ROSA) for the IEEE 10GBASE-LRM standard using Fabry-Perot (FP) laser diodes and PIN detectors, which extend performance, conserve power, and expand control. Demonstrations will be held at next week’s ECOC 2007 exhibition in Berlin, Germany (17-19 September).

To date, LRM (long-reach multimode) products have been based on more expensive and power-hungry distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. The FP lasers in Finisar's TOSA are inherently less expensive but still able to meet all the performance requirements of the IEEE 10GBASE-LRM standard, and reduce overall transceiver power consumption substantially, Finisar says.

In the ROSA, automatic gain control and receive-signal detect capabilities enable developers to optimize individual link performance and implement intelligent fault detection, says the firm. In the TOSA, a unique impedance matching network reduces power consumption. Also, the TOSA and ROSA are offered in two connector options (SC and LC) and include a flex circuit for simplified electrical connectivity.

“These new 1310nm LRM subassemblies are important additions to Finisar’s existing portfolio of 850nm short-reach products,” says Dr Jim Tatum, director of marketing for Finisar Advanced Optical Components.

*Finisar rebounds from last quarter’s inventory adjustments

For its fiscal first-quarter 2008 (ended 29 July 2007), Finisar has reported revenues of $105.7m. This is down slightly from $106.2m a year ago, but up 8.7% on last quarter’s slump to $97.3m from $107.5m the previous quarter (hit mainly by the transition by two customers to ‘just-in-time inventory’ arrangements and the utilization by certain customers of excess inventories of products designed for SAN applications).

Revenues for optical products were $96.4m, up 9% on $88.4m last quarter. In particular, shipments of products for 10-40Gb/s applications were $18.2m, up 22.8% on $14.9m last quarter and up 218% on $5.8m a year ago (more than trebling).

Gross margins were down on the previous quarter, due mainly to extra costs from ramping the introduction of new products and ‘unfavorable manufacturing variances’ associated with reducing production levels to better match inventories on hand.

“We were pleased to see revenues bounce back from last quarter as we recovered from a number of customer supply chain and excess inventory issues,” says president and CEO Jerry Rawls. “We are heavily focused on the continued penetration of the telecom equipment market for 10Gb/s, 40Gb/s, and WDM [wavelength division multiplexing] products and the LAN/SAN [local-area and storage-area network] markets for 8Gb/s and 10Gb/s products,” he adds. “We continue to invest in R&D in all these emerging market areas as our customers continue to be optimistic about the end-user demand for more bandwidth.”

The latest quarterly results are preliminary and do not include figures on profits, pending any adjustments that may be required as a result of Finisar’s ongoing review of its historical stock option grants (which have so far prevented it filing its annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal 2007 as well as interim quarterly reports on Form 10-Q).

See related items:

Finisar receives Nasdaq staff determination notice for last fiscal year

Finisar’s record year tempered by last-quarter

Finisar cuts revenue forecast due to excess inventories

Finisar acquires AZNA and Kodeos after shipping 10 million transceivers/transponders last year

Visit: http://www.Finisar.com