Non-profit consortium, the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) recently held its technical and MA&E committees meeting for Q2 of this year.
During the virtual event, members initiated three new projects, including a co-packaged optics external laser module, AI for enhanced network operations and CEI-112G-Linear.
The external laser small form factor pluggable (ELSFP) module project is a companion project to support co-packaged optics applications. The project for a blind-mate pluggable external light source module will define a new form factor optimised to package lasers to support co-packaged optical modules.
Explained Cisco’s Gary Nicholl, an OIF board member: ‘The ELSFP project is an important step for enabling co-packaged optics deployments. Objectives include the necessary technical considerations to ensure this project will be relevant for multiple generations.
The application of AI to enhanced network operations project looks at how a healthy high-performance network is the foundation for 5G application scenarios. Traditional approaches face significant difficulties in automatically and efficiently analysing network data, solving network faults, and optimising. The project aims to result in a white paper identifying a collection of use cases for applying AI to construct intelligent, resilient and high-performance optical and packet networks.
The CEI-112G-linear project was devised due to the need for a linear chip-to-optical engine interface to enable low power, low cost, small form factor 112G serial optical modules in co-packaged optics, near package optics (NPO) and server/GPU applications. It will facilitate increased bandwidth and reduced power of switch ports using co-packaged and closely packaged optical modules.
