At OFC 2023 (Mar. 5-9) in San Diego, OFS announced that it has joined the Terabit BiDi Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group.
OFS is a global designer, manufacturer, and supplier of fiber-optic network products. The Terabit BiDi MSA specification addresses short-reach applications including the critical high-volume interconnects between switches in modern data centers.
The MSA's specifications utilize the widely adopted dual wavelength bidirectional (BiDi) transmission technology. This provides an upgrade path to the large-scale deployed parallel MMF cabling infrastructure.
The Terabit BiDi MSA specifications are built upon the 100 Gb/s Ethernet MMF specifications. Terabit BiDi MSA participants are responding to an industry need for lower cost and lower power consumption solutions in the 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s form factors that bidirectional MMF technology can provide, notes the MSA.
"Multimode bidirectional optical transceivers have been crucial for preserving the usefulness of already existing fiber cables in data centers as technology has progressed from 10 to 25 to 50 Gb/s per lane. The Terabit BiDi specification is a roadmap to continue this trend," said David Piehler, MSA co-chair.
In addition to OFS, members of the Terabit BiDi MSA include Alibaba, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Coherent, CommScope, Corning, Dell Technologies, HGGenuine, Hisense, Lumentum, MACOM, Marvell, Panduit and Tencent.
The MSA recently announced the publication of release 1.0 of its optical specifications for 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s optical interfaces over 70 meters of OM4 multimode fiber (MMF) and over 100 m of OM5 multimode fiber.
This week in Broadcom's OFC 2023 booth, , in collaboration with the companies' partners in the Terabit BiDi MSA group, 800G BiDi performance is demonstrated over 100 m of OFS multimode fiber.
"The transition to 100 Gb/s per lane signaling is rapidly underway, and the release of the Terabit BiDi specifications is just in time for the industry to adopt cost-effective and fast interfaces with VCSEL based solutions," noted Tzu Hao Chow, MSA co-chair.
Visit www.terabit-bidi-msa.com.
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