Oclaro is now sampling what it says is the industry’s first SFP28-LR transceiver capable of transmitting 28Gb/s data rates over 10km with approximately 1W power consumption. Prototypes of the new SFP28-LR transceiver were demonstrated at the OFC show in Los Angeles, California, in the Oclaro booth #2011.
Timed with the market availability of 32G Fibre Channel (28.05Gb/s) applications, the Oclaro SFP28 transceivers offer double the transmission rate of the previous 16G Fibre Channel generation (14.025Gbps) and enable the high-throughput, energy efficiency and enhanced security required by new hyper-scale solid state drive (SSD) storage systems and data centres.
Hyper-scale SSD storage systems and data centres are a vital part of the core infrastructure used in cloud computing, where rapid and reliable storing, accessing, and processing of Big Data represent major technical challenges. Serial transmission rates of around 25Gb/s may also be required in a variety of emerging applications, such 25 Gigabit Ethernet, which is currently being standardised by the IEEE. In these next generation network architectures, SFP28 transceivers provide a cost-effective migration path from existing 10G SFP+ designs by offering a 2.5 times increase in capacity. SFP28 modules are also lower in cost, smaller in size, and consume less power than other available options to upgrade the bandwidth, such as 40G QSFP+ transceivers, which are based on four 10G lanes that are multiplexed in wavelength for applications requiring a reach of 10km.
“With the SFP28-LR transceiver, Oclaro customers will be ready to meet the needs of Gen 6 Fibre Channel applications,” said Yves LeMaitre, president of optical connectivity business at Oclaro. “In addition, enterprise and data centre hardware customers will be able to leverage this innovative new product, which represents Oclaro’s first contribution to the fast expanding 25G Ethernet eco-system.”
“We see initial demand for 32G Fibre Channel materializing in early 2016, and a large portion of the revenue will be in the singlemode segment,” said Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO of LightCounting Market Research. “In addition, we are expecting demand for data rates above 10Gb/s in next-generation applications such as wireless or 25G Ethernet, once these become standardised.”
The Oclaro SFP28-LR transceiver is SFF-8432 compliant and delivers data rates of 25.78125Gb/s (25GE) or 28.05Gb/s (32GFC) with a reach of up to 10km. Additional features include a BER of <10-6, C-Temp, and a power consumption of approximately 1W.
Oclaro is expected to start sampling the SFP28-LR transceivers in the second half of 2015 with a production release scheduled for early 2016.