Kaiam, a developer of high-performance datacom optical transceivers, has launched LightScale2, an upgraded optical integration platform enabling ‘unprecedented’ performance and scalability. The company is currently sampling CWDM4 100G QSFP28s modules based on this architecture.
This planar approach combines multiple transmit and receive blocks in a very dense architecture that is simple to assemble and delivers higher performance than standard approaches, the company claims. The platform is scalable to 200G, 400G, and beyond, and will be applicable to higher density on-board optics in the future.
Kaiam has been shipping 40G and 100G transceivers for hyperscale data centres in volume since 2014. These products are based on its hybrid optical integration platform that uses micro-electromechanical (MEMS) to align and lock down the components on the chip. This MEMS-based packaging is intrinsically dense, allowing Kaiam to combine best-of-breed components such as indium phosphide lasers and silica waveguides with silicon photonics.
The company’s LightScale1 platform uses this proprietary MEMS technique to create optical engines in a standard TOSA/ROSA architecture (using individual transmitter and receiver optical sub-assemblies). LightScale2 flattens the internal architecture of the transceiver to improve density, RF signal integrity, thermal management, power consumption, and manufacturing simplicity.
Bardia Pezeshki, Kaiam’s CEO, commented: ‘By liberating our technology from outdated telecom architectures, we can manufacture very dense and high-performance multi-wavelength transceivers and modules. The new 100G QSPF28s being sampled now are a brilliant testament to the advantages of this approach.’
Kaiam executives will be available at ECOC, stand #389, to discuss the benefits and potential of the new platform.