Oclaro Ready With 25G Lasers

The company has qualified its 25Gbit/s laser diodes for use in 25G and 100G optical interconnect. Meanwhile, Oclaro is "end-of-lifing" its 40G products.

Brian Santo, Senior editor, Test & Measurement / Components, Light Reading

March 16, 2016

2 Min Read
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In anticipation of the 40G market withering away, Oclaro is putting its emphasis on its 25Gbit/s laser diode line. Data centers are jumping to 100 Gbits/s, and currently the easiest route to 100G is with 4 x 25G transceivers meshed to transmit over single-mode fiber.

Meanwhile, companies with 10G interconnect and no immediate need to jump to 100G, which includes many telcos, can get a 2.5x acceleration in many instances without having to upgrade much else other than the interconnect.

Oclaro Inc. (Nasdaq: OCLR) said its 25Gbit/s 1.3 μm distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes have been qualified for 100Gbit/s transceivers, and are now ready to move into production.

The 25Gbit/s DFB laser diode is designed for high-end spine switch/core router interfaces and large-scale data center meshed networks, the company said.

The diodes operate in non-hermetic packages, which the company explained should encourage easier implementation and therefore faster adoption.

Want to know more about communications ICs? Check out our comms chips channel here on Light Reading.

The 25G diodes are built with Oclaro’s InAlGaAs-MQW process. Oclaro chief marketing officer Adam Carter estimates that while there might be well in excess of a dozen fabs around the world capable of creating 10G lasers, only a small handful can do 25G and above, putting Oclaro in rare company at the leading edge of the market.

Meanwhile, he said, Oclaro will be "end-of-lifing" its 40G portfolio.

At the same time, the company said it has qualified and released to production both its 2km CWDM4 QSFP28 and 10km LR4 QSFP28 client-side transceivers designed for 100Gbit/s interconnections between switches within data centers, in addition to conventional router and transport 100Gbit/s client side interfaces in core networks.

By delivering low power consumption and high transmission performance quality through Oclaro’s internal 1310 28 Gbit/s laser diode and lens-integrated receiver technologies, the CWDM4 and LR4 QSFP28 transceivers will enable data centers to transition to longer-reach SMF interconnections needed to support today’s growing bandwidth demands.

— Brian Santo, SeniorEditor, Components, T&M, LightReading

About the Author

Brian Santo

Senior editor, Test & Measurement / Components, Light Reading

Santo joined Light Reading on September 14, 2015, with a mission to turn the test & measurement and components sectors upside down and then see what falls out, photograph the debris and then write about it in a manner befitting his vast experience. That experience includes more than nine years at video and broadband industry publication CED, where he was editor-in-chief until May 2015. He previously worked as an analyst at SNL Kagan, as Technology Editor of Cable World and held various editorial roles at Electronic Engineering Times, IEEE Spectrum and Electronic News. Santo has also made and sold bedroom furniture, which is not directly relevant to his role at Light Reading but which has already earned him the nickname 'Cribmaster.'

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