low power Archives - EFFECT Photonics

News

March 6, 2023

Credo and EFFECT Photonics Announce Collaboration on High-Performance, Ultralow Power Coherent DSP Solutions

Industry Leaders Join Forces to Meet the Next Generation Needs of Service Providers, 5G Telecom…

Industry Leaders Join Forces to Meet the Next Generation Needs of Service Providers, 5G Telecom and Fixed Access Operators

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands and SAN JOSE, Calif.—Credo (NASDAQ:CRDO) and EFFECT Photonics today announced plans to collaborate on the development of coherent Digital Signal Processor (DSP) merchant ICs, featuring industry-leading power dissipation and performance. The DSPs are expected to deliver the capacity and reach needed to meet the explosive demands for connectivity and bandwidth and enable cost-effective network upgrades over existing physical fiber infrastructure. These merchant silicon offerings have the added benefit of giving customers the flexibility to choose from a variety of transceiver suppliers.

The two companies will work together to develop new coherent DSP products featuring EFFECT Photonics’ coherent DSP technology and Forward Error Correction (FEC), combined with Credo’s high-speed SerDes, I/Os, Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), and Digital to Analog Converters (DACs). Credo will manufacture and manage the sales and supply channels of the co-developed merchant ICs, and provide complete design services and customer support.

The first products will target 100G ZR and 100G ZR+ applications. The products will work within the popular QSFP28 optical module’s ultralow 5W power envelope and extend network reach well beyond 80km to support advanced application requirements. These products will target new buildouts and the imminent 10G upgrade cycle to 100G for service providers, 5G telecom and fixed-access operators.

Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst at 650 Group stated, “Merchant solutions will help drive down the cost, and with the installed base of 10G ports in excess of 13M ports, there is a significant installed base that needs to upgrade to 100G to support new applications and traffic patterns, plus potential new market opportunities that coherent DSPs can open up in service provider, cloud, and enterprise edge networks.”

“Coherent technologies are gaining importance as they improve spectral efficiency and increase data throughput. Historically, coherent solutions have been mostly deployed for very long distances due to their high power and high cost,” said Scott Feller, Vice President of Marketing at Credo. “Our first collaboration with EFFECT Photonics will allow us to deliver capabilities that fit into the power envelopes of the most commonly used transceivers at a competitive price, providing our large volume customers with a refined solution that will seamlessly integrate into their existing access and edge infrastructure to address the dramatic bandwidth growth at the network edge.”

“Our field-proven coherent technology and Credo’s high-performance, power-efficient connectivity solutions and semiconductor manufacturing expertise provide a potent combination that we believe could truly revolutionize the network edge and access interconnect market,” said Harald Graber, Chief Commercial Officer at EFFECT Photonics. “The clear market need for this technology presents a truly exciting opportunity for both of our companies.”

The joint solutions will offer numerous benefits, including high performance, small size, excellent energy efficiency and cost-efficient production.

DSP Feature Set/Advantages:

Optimized ZR and ZR+ solutions cover 40 to 500km links.
Energy-efficiency with ultralow power consumption.
Devices will be rated for both commercial and industrial temperature operating ranges.
Compliant with industry standards.
Credo’s high-speed data converters, SerDes and I/Os, are optimized for performance and energy efficiency.
EFFECT Photonics’ best-in-class, field-proven coherent DSP and FEC technology (gained through the company’s acquisition agreement with Viasat).
Credo will be the sole supplier of the merchant ICs, working with its foundry partners to provide dependable supply chain fulfilment with competitive lead times.
Credo’s DSP expertise leverages its N-1 process technology advantage to deliver the most cost-effective coherent DSPs in the market.

About Credo
Our mission is to deliver high-speed solutions to break bandwidth barriers on every wired connection in the data infrastructure market. Credo is an innovator in providing secure, high-speed connectivity solutions that deliver improved power and cost efficiency as data rates and corresponding bandwidth requirements increase exponentially throughout the data infrastructure market. Our innovations ease system bandwidth bottlenecks while simultaneously improving on power, security and reliability. Our connectivity solutions are optimized for optical and electrical Ethernet applications, including the emerging 100G (or Gigabits per second), 200G, 400G and 800G port markets. Our products are based on our proprietary Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) and Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technologies. Our product families include integrated circuits (ICs), Active Electrical Cables (AECs) and SerDes Chiplets. Our intellectual property (IP) solutions consist primarily of SerDes IP licensing.

For more information, please visit: https://www.credosemi.com. Follow Credo on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About EFFECT Photonics
Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent optical systems company addressing the need for high-performance, affordable optic solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities. Using our field-proven digital signal processing and forward error correction technology and ultra-pure light sources, we offer compact form factors with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply. By leveraging established microelectronics ecosystems, we aim to make our products affordable and available in high volumes to address the challenges in 5G and beyond, access-ready coherent solutions, and cloud and cloud edge services.

For more information, please visit: https://www.effectphotonics.com. Follow EFFECT Photonics on LinkedIn and Twitter.

# # #

Media Contacts:
Diane Vanasse
Credo
Diane.vanasse@credosemi.com

Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com

Tags: 100G ZR, 10G Upgrade Cycle, 5G, Access and Edge Infrastructure, ADCs, bandwidth, Cloud and Cloud Edge Services., Coherent DSP Technology, Collaboration, Cost Efficiency, Credo, DACs, digital signal processing, DSP, EFFECT Photonics, forward error correction (FEC), Foundry Partners, Industry Standards, low power, Microelectronics Ecosystems, QSFP28 Optical Module, Security of Supply, SerDes, SerDes IP Licensing, Ultra-Pure Light Sources, Vertical Integration

Insights

February 16, 2023

What DSPs Does the Network Edge Need?

Operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house tunable coherent optics in compact,…

Operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house tunable coherent optics in compact, low-power form factors like QSFP28. A recently released Heavy Reading survey revealed that over 75% of operators surveyed believe that 100G coherent pluggable optics will be used extensively in their edge and access evolution strategy.

These new 100G coherent pluggables will have very low power consumption (less than six Watts) and will be deployed in uncontrolled environments, imposing new demands on coherent digital signal processors (DSPs). To enable this next generation of coherent pluggables in the network edge, the next generation of DSPs needs ultra-low power consumption, co-designing with the optical engine, and industrial hardening.

The Power Requirements of the Network Edge

Several applications in the network edge can benefit from upgrading their existing 10G DWDM, or 100G grey links into 100G DWDM, such as the aggregation of fixed and mobile access networks and 100G data center interconnects for enterprises. However, network providers have often chosen to stick to their 10G links because the existing 100G solutions do not check all the required boxes.

100G direct detect pluggables have a more limited reach and are not always compatible with DWDM systems. “Scaled down” coherent 400ZR solutions have the required reach and tunability, but they are too expensive and power-hungry for edge applications. Besides, the ports in small to medium IP routers used in edge deployments often do not support QSFP-DD modules commonly used in 400ZR but QSFP28 modules.

The QSFP28 form factor imposes tighter footprint and power consumption constraints on coherent technologies compared to QSFP-DD modules. QSFP28 is slightly smaller, and most importantly, it can handle at most a 6-Watt power consumption, in contrast with the typical 15-Watt consumption of QSFP-DD modules in 400ZR links. Fortunately, the industry is moving towards a proper 100ZR solution in the QSFP28 form factor that balances performance, footprint, and power consumption requirements for the network edge.

These power requirements also impact DSP power consumption. DSPs constitute roughly 50% of coherent transceiver power consumption, so a DSP optimized for the network edge 100G use cases should aim to consume at most 2.5 to 3 Watts of power.

Figure 1: Normalized power breakdown of the internal blocks of a 400ZR pluggable module. Although this breakdown may vary a bit among different vendors, the authors find it to be generally true for various DSP-based modules, both IM-DD and coherent. Source: R. Nagarajan et al., IEEE JLT (2021)

Co-Designing and Adjusting for Power Efficiency

Achieving this ambitious power target will require scaling down performance in some areas and designing smartly in others. Let’s discuss a few examples below.

Modulation: 400ZR transceivers use a more power-hungry 16QAM modulation. This modulation scheme uses sixteen different states that arise from combining four different intensity levels and four phases of light. The new generation of 100ZR transceivers might use some variant of a QPSK modulation, which only uses four states from four different phases of light.
Forward Error Correction (FEC): DSPs in 400ZR transceivers use a more advanced concatenated FEC (CFEC) code, which combines inner and outer FEC codes to enhance the performance compared to a standard FEC code. The new 100ZR transceivers might use a more basic FEC type like GFEC. This is one of the earliest optical FEC algorithms and was adopted as part of the ITU G.709 specification.
Co-Designing DSP and Optical Engine: As we explained in a previous article about fit-for-platform DSPs, a transceiver optical engine designed on the indium phosphide platform could be designed to run at a voltage compatible with the DSP’s signal output. This way, the optimized DSP could drive the PIC directly without needing a separate analog driver, doing away with a significant power conversion overhead compared to a silicon photonics setup, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 2: Comparison between the drive power and power consumption of three different PIC + DSP pairings: standard DSP with a silicon PIC, standard DSP with an InP PIC, and an optimized DSP with an InP.

Industrial Hardening for DSPs

Traditionally, coherent devices have resided in the controlled settings of data center machine rooms or network provider equipment rooms. These rooms have active temperature control, cooling systems, dust and particle filters, airlocks, and humidity control. In such a setting, pluggable transceivers must operate within the so-called commercial temperature range (c-temp) from 0 to 70ºC.

On the other hand, the network edge often involves uncontrolled settings outdoors at the whims of Mother Nature. It might be at the top of an antenna, on mountain ranges, within traffic tunnels, or in Northern Europe’s severe winters. For these outdoor settings, transceivers should operate in the industrial temperature range (I-temp) from -40 to 85ºC. Higher altitude deployments provide additional challenges too. Because the air gets thinner, networking equipment cooling mechanisms become less effective, and the device cannot withstand casing temperatures as high as they can at sea level.

Industrial Hardening: Coherent Goes Outdoors — Making an I-temp transceiver means that every internal component—lasers, optical engine, DSP—must also be I-temp compliant. Thus, it’s essential to specifically design DSPs that can reliably work within the I-temp range.

Takeaways

The network edge could benefit from switching their existing direct detect or grey links to 100G DWDM coherent. However, the industry needs more affordable and power-efficient transceivers and DSPs specifically designed for coherent 100G transmission in edge and access networks. By realizing DSPs co-designed with the optics, adjusted for reduced power consumption, and industrially hardened, the network edge will have coherent DSP and transceiver products adapted to their needs.

Tags: 100ZR, access network, co-design, controlled, edge, fit for platform DSP, InP, low power, pluggables, power consumption, power conversion, QSFP 28, QSFP-DD

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Telecom/Datacom

Emerging Industries

DSP & FEC

Ultra Pure Light Sources

Ecosystems

Pluggable Modules – Direct Detect

Pluggable Modules – Coherent

Sub-Assemblies

ASICs

View All

Insights

News

Events

Careers

Knowledge Center

Company Info

Contact Us