Semiconductor developer Inphi is sampling the M200, an ultra-low power and high-performance digital signal processor (DSP) supporting 100G and 200G data rates for coherent optical modules.
The M200 is the first member of Inphi’s 16nm LightSpeed-III family of SoC devices, from the company’s acquisition of ClariPhy.
The new chip is the industry’s lowest power coherent DSP and offers market-leading optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) performance to enable the next step in line card capacity and performance, according to InPhi. The chip is suited to both analogue coherent optics (ACO) and digital coherent optics (DCO) modules such as CFP-DCO, CFP2-DCO and CFP2-ACO, or line cards with discrete optics implementations.
“Next generation coherent DSPs like the M200 are key to enabling the high-density, low-power coherent WDM solutions that are critical for driving network expansion in the metro market,” said Heidi Adams, senior research director, transport networks at IHS Markit. “200G in particular is emerging as a hot technology for metro data centre interconnect applications, and with a five-year combined annual growth rate of 87 per cent, is the sweet spot for growth in the metro.”
“Inphi’s M200 coherent transceiver will change the way customers build and deploy networking equipment by providing a unique combination of best-in-class performance and power consumption, at market leading integration and economics,” said Nariman Yousefi, senior vice president, coherent DSP, Inphi.
The DSP supports two host SerDes with selectable 10G and 28G NRZ interfaces and 100G client FEC termination to eliminate the need for external gearbox chips. The device also integrates next-generation client features, such as FIPS-compliant AES256 encryption, Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) monitoring, and complete OTN overhead processing.
To accelerate system integration, InPhi provides a turn-key reference design with a complete suite of hardware design files and user-friendly software.
The M200 has been sampled to multiple equipment manufacturers and module partners with general availability targeted for year-end.