Kaiam, a manufacturer of advanced data center optical transceivers, will demonstrate the industry’s highest density 8-lane single-mode 400G transceiver in a QSFP-DD form factor at OFC 2018. This world-class density is enabled by the innovative LightScale2 architecture used in Kaiam’s XQX5000 series of 100GBASE-CWDM4 QSFP28 pluggables.
The simplified, flattened, non-hermetic LightScale2 platform supports the dense requirements of 8 lanes of 50G PAM4 in a QSFP-DD package with excellent signal integrity and thermal performance. The LightScale2 platform is optimized for high-volume, low-cost manufacturing and flexibly supports both 4-lane and 8-lane 200G and 400G transceiver variants, including 400G-LR8/FR8, 400G-FR4, 2x100G-LR4, 2x100G-CWDM4, 2x100G-4WDM-10, 200G-FR4, and 2x200G-FR4. These can be supported in either QSFP-DD or OSFP packages. The platform can further extend to future 800G solutions, and even beyond pluggables to Kaiam’s innovative Co-Packaged Photonics Interconnect (CoPPhI).
“As capacity and density requirements increase in the data center, our MEMS-based PLC approach further outperforms traditional approaches,” commented Bardia Pezeshki, CEO. “At OFC 2018, we are demonstrating a transceiver that has 4x the bandwidth of the previous generation in roughly the same QSFP form factor, highlighting the bandwidth and density scalability of Kaiam’s technology.”
“We’re seeing market need for 400G QSFP-DD transceivers in 2019, but uncertainty and skepticism about whether transceiver vendors can deliver cost-effective solutions at scale with the high speeds needed per lane and the desired reach. Our ability to offer a simple 8-channel 400G solution in advance of the more complex 4-channel electronics, with the full 10km reach, gives the customers faster and easier access to 400G in the desired compact form factor,” commented Jeremy Dietz, VP of Global Sales & Marketing.
The LightScale2 platform leverages Kaiam’s core technologies: Optical Wire Bond (OWB) hybrid optical integration, and SCOTS PLCs. OWB harnesses MEMS to enable hybrid optical integration of best-in-class technologies with high optical coupling efficiency, high parallelism, compactness, robustness, and low cost. Kaiam’s world-class PLCs provide key transceiver optical functions such as wavelength mux/demux, power splitting, and mode size conversion. The fundamental flexibility and extensibility of these core technologies expands the horizon of Kaiam’s product roadmap to 400G, 800G and beyond.
Headquartered in Newark, California, with large-scale manufacturing in Livingston, Scotland, Kaiam is a leading manufacturer of optical transceivers for hyperscale data centers. Current products include 100Gb/s LightScale optical transceivers optimized for data centers and a range of planar lightwave circuits (PLCs). For more information, visit www.kaiam.com.
