ANTONY SAVVAS OPENZR+
OpenZR+ was designed to expand the application space for a coherent solution in a small form factor pluggable module
Chaouch, distinguished engineer at Arista Networks, says, “400ZR is critical to meeting customer demand for growing data centre interconnect bandwidth, and we believe the thermal and optical performance of Acacia’s coherent platform in the OSFP form factor will provide network operators with a very reliable and power-efficient solution.” Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst at Cignal AI, says of the potential, “Interoperable 400G solutions have the potential to transform cloud DCI and traditional operator architectures and create new applications for coherent optics at the edge of the network.” FORECASTS The first OpenZR+ pluggable modules will probably see some production in the second half of 2020, but the publishing of the OpenZR+ MSA, expected later this year, should drive wider production. But for technology research house IHS Markit, while the potential for OpenZR+ is clear, the commercial deployment of such technology may be gradual. Timothy Munks, principal research analyst for optical networks and data centre optics at IHS Markit, says, “We believe there is good market opportunity for OpenZR+, but it needs a formal standard or official MSA to become a reality. If this does happen in a timely manner and open and disaggregated initiatives continue to gain popularity, we expect OpenZR+ based products will compete with multi-rate embedded solutions for metro and regional optical transport networks.” He says if the group currently around OpenZR+ formalises an MSA with ‘robust specifications’, these products could come to market ‘relatively quickly’ because they leverage
existing work from both 400ZR and Open ROADM projects. However, he warns, it is still currently unclear how and when OpenZR+ based products will be realised. “For our forecast, we assume that OpenZR+ becomes commercially
multi-vendor interoperability, in order to provide network operators with an operationally efficient solution for DCI applications with reaches beyond 120km.” OpenZR+ can help address not only a broader range of hyperscale data centre applications for higher-performance edge and regional interconnects, but also some emerging carrier transport architectures, Williams says. He adds that the commercial driver for the technology is a need for 400G pluggables that are ‘critical’ to meeting customer demand for DCI bandwidth. “We anticipate that the availability of merchant DSP (digital signal processor) solutions supporting OpenZR+ will help to expand the use cases for interoperable coherent pluggable modules in a QSFP-DD or OSFP form factor.” Atul Srivastava, CTO at NTT Electronics, says, “The enhanced functionality and improved
available in 2022,” says Munks. For the general pluggable and
interoperable transponder market, if the product development schedules of the leading vendors hold, he says, it is expected that customer sampling and trial activities for 400ZR will begin in the second half of 2020, with the possibility of the first commercial deployments by the end of the fourth quarter in 2020. IHS Markit expects that 400ZR will be used primarily for P2P 400G links interconnecting routers and switches and for Ethernet muxponding of four 100GE channels. It forecasts commercial deployments for Open ROADM transponders to begin in the second half of 2020. For both 400ZR and Open ROADM, commercial deployments will ramp up in 2021. Because of the ‘uncertainty’ about OpenZR+, and the fact it is ‘intended for similar applications in data centre networks as Open ROADM is for telecom service provider networks’, IHS Markit says it has grouped OpenZR+ and Open ROADM in a single category for its market forecasts. It also says it expects that costs for OpenZR+ and Open ROADM optics to be similar. While commercial deployments for Open ROADM transponders will begin in 2H20, OpenZR+ “will lag the Open ROADM schedule [by up to nine months] and these products may not see commercial deployments until 2022”, says IHS Markit. The combined worldwide market for the two is expected to be worth over US$500 million by 2023.
performance of OpenZR+ was designed to allow network operators to address a wide range of applications using this interoperable solution. By exchanging test vectors with Acacia, we are helping to
Atul Srivastava, CTO, NTT
enable network operators to move forward with increased confidence that multiple module vendors will be supporting the OpenZR+ ecosystem.” In addition, Arista Networks is testing Acacia’s initial offering to the industry. Referring to the Acacia 400G-OSFP-ZR module working with the Arista 7000 Series switches and routers, Hacene
TESTING AND MEASUREMENT
transceivers. Having a single metric, like transmitter dispersion eye closure (TDECQ) used for PAM4, is the goal for interoperable 400G coherent optics. IHS Markit says the industry is also working to standardise on error vector magnitude (EVM), which was standardised for 100G coherent applications. EVM is a single metric that predicts OSNR performance with various transmission impairments.
transponders from different vendors over an open line system. To accomplish this, says IHS Markit, the T&M equipment needs to be able to simulate the worst-case performance of the transmitter, receiver and line system independently, to test for errors in all possible vendor, impairment and performance permutations. 400ZR will be used in data centres in a similar fashion as 100G PAM4-based datacom
The development of interoperable coherent transponders creates challenges for test and measurement (T&M) equipment. The standards for 100Gbps coherent using DP-QPSK need to be adapted for 400G data rates and higher order modulation up to 16QAM. Besides performance and optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) testing, T&M equipment also needs to add the capability of testing for interoperability of
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ISSUE 21 | Q3 2020
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