News Announcement
Silicon Photonics Innovator Kotura Unveils Low-Power 100 Gb/s Optical Engine
Tiny Chips Reduce Power Consumption, Go the Distance to Deliver
Fast, High-Speed Communication
MONTEREY PARK, Calif., March 1, 2012 – Next week at
OFC/NFOEC 2012,
silicon photonics innovator Kotura, Inc. will demonstrate its
low-power 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) optical engine to support
the interconnect fabric for next generation data centers and high
performance computers (HPC). The new optical engine chips are based
on Kotura’s micron scale manufacturing platform currently in mass
production and deployed in live networks around the world since 2006.
With three of the five largest telecommunication OEMs already using
Kotura products in their 10, 40 and 100 Gb/s networks, the company
is approaching a million channels per year currently in production.
Kotura’s silicon photonics platform supports optical engines using Wave
Division Multiplexing (WDM), in which different signals can share the
same path. As the only silicon photonics provider to offer WDM,
Kotura’s optical engine provides distinct advantages, including
reducing the cost of fiber and associated connectors within the
interconnect fabric for 4x25 GHz solutions by a factor of four, as
well as readily expanding from four channels to eight, 16 or even 40
channels over a single strand of optical fiber. Additionally,
Kotura’s silicon photonics platform also supports optical engines
using parallel fiber channels.
“The optical engine provides our customers with an inexpensive, small
form factor that reduces power consumption and provides a high level
of integration,” said Mehdi Asghari, CTO of Kotura. “Moreover, we
are addressing the need for green solutions that will alleviate some
of the strain associated with power hogs such as data centers and high
performance computers. Since our inception, we have been focused on
developing a platform that enables innovative solutions based on
silicon photonics that can take us to the next generation of connectivity.
This is an important milestone, and we look forward to being a part
of new computing solutions that outperform what is possible today.”
Because Kotura’s platform is capable of high yield manufacturing,
attractive price volume curves can be achieved. Kotura has integrated
important functionalities – such as flip chip attached lasers, high
performance WDM de/multiplexers, fast low power modulators and high-speed
detectors – into a single pair of silicon chips eliminating the need for
hundreds of piece parts and dozens of assembly steps. The Kotura optical
engine is so small that a 100 Gb/s transceiver will easily fit inside a
QSFP package, the smallest 40G package on the market today, greatly
increasing the panel density of 100 Gb/s transceivers.
“We are in the early stages of a market with huge potential,” said Brad Smith,
senior vice president at Lightcounting, a market research analyst firm
tracking high-speed interconnects. “100G in a QSFP package over a single
strand of single-mode fiber is exactly what the HPC, traditional data center
and switch/routing infrastructure is looking for to support next generation
systems and to gear up for the ‘exa-flood’ of data coming.”
Finding fast enough interconnects has become the limiting factor for the entire
industry. With 10 core microprocessors, four per server, virtualization and
48-60 servers per rack, the aggregate bandwidth at the top-of-rack switch will
hit 480-600G. This will require four to five 100G up links per rack and large
data centers using 200-500 racks.
According to Smith, the advantages of silicon photonics are enormous, enabling
long-haul optical WDM to move to the server and switch rack. Silicon photonics
and WDM allow modulation speed to bump up to 40G/50G and more channels in the
future without having to upgrade the entire fiber plant.
As part of Kotura’s optical engine demo at OFC,
Anritsu Company will be using its bit error rate tester, the MP1800A, to support
100 Gb/s networking applications. A world leader in high-speed test instrumentation,
Anritsu was selected for the demonstration because the MP1800A is a modular BERT with
a built-in Pulse Pattern Generator (PPG) that supports output of high-quality, low
intrinsic jitter signals, as well as a built-in Error Detector (ED) with high input
sensitivity of 10 mV. The MP1800A also supports signal analyses, including bathtub
and Q measurements.
As a leader in silicon photonics, Kotura devices have reliably logged more than one
billion channel hours of operation. The company has 140 issued and applied patents.
At OFC, the chips for the optical engine will be on display at Kotura’s booth #1951,
while the demo will be shown privately. For more about Kotura, please visit
www.kotura.com.
About Kotura, Inc.
Kotura, Inc., a worldwide leader in silicon
photonics, designs, manufactures and markets application-specific integrated circuits
(ASICs) for the communications, computing, sensing and detection markets. The
company is singularly focused on the application of silicon photonics to solve a
range of communications problems. An ISO 9001:2008 certified company, Kotura’s
unique platform technology integrates optics and electronics to refine optical
networking, applying photons where electrons are currently used, and developing
ASICs that provide a bridge to the next generation of connectivity. The company’s
in-house fab ensures that its silicon photonic ICs are manufactured to the highest
quality standards, resulting in high-performance, affordable solutions that are
power efficient and have a small footprint. Known for operational excellence,
Kotura was founded in 2004, and is headquartered in Monterey Park, Calif. with an
office in Shenzhen, China. For more information, please visit
www.kotura.com or follow the company on
Facebook.
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