JOHN WILLIAMSON CO-PACKAGED OPTICS
Yole also points out
“It is also important to point out that, despite the mainstream deployment of high-end CPO solutions for 200Tbps switches and beyond, mainly for big cloud operators, there are still plenty of smaller enterprise data centres that don’t adopt the latest optical interconnect technologies,” clarifies Vallo. “The technology exchange (here) is at a much slower pace.” NOT THERE YET There are, however, a collection of tricky issues needing to be addressed before we arrive at the sunlit uplands of CPO. Some of these issues relate to the demand side and others to the supply side of the CPO equation, and a number intersect at considerations of how competitive CPO will begin to be with FPPs, and how competitive FPPs will continue to be with CPO. Gasman considers that the achievement of manufacturing in volume is one challenge facing CPO. The fact that CPO devices are “not completely pluggable in the old sense” is another. Since CPO technology will rely heavily on silicon photonics, Vallo reasons that, with highly integrated optics and silicon chips, new engineering capabilities and foundries will be needed. “To satisfy the market demands and convince end-users of CPO viability, a multi-vendor business model and manufacturing yield must be acceptable,” he adds.
that today’s optical modules market
has well established vertical integration This encompasses components suppliers, either discrete or integrated, optics houses and suppliers with Transmitter Optical Sub- Assembly (TOSA), Receive Optical Sub-Assembly (ROSA), multiplexer, DSP, and PCB products, and assembly/test integrators. “In such a multi-vendor market model, many different suppliers are involved. Moreover, the
seems that pluggable 1.6T Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable- Extra Density (OSFP-XD) will become preferable for 100 Terabit switching capacity,” states Vallo. “It is still unclear if 3.2T OSFP-XD will be a pluggable form factor, possibly enabling 204.8T” “Even if CPO becomes a mainstream technology, pluggable modules will remain in high demand for several applications where CPO is not technically or economically feasible, such as long-haul applications or edge data centres,” predicts Vallo. TRACKING THE PACKAGE So what do some experts see coming next down the packaged optics highway?
interoperability of multiple different pluggable modules at one switch box contributes to the industry’s flexibility,” comments Vallo. “These are principal advantages over CPO today.” PULLING THE PLUG? Observations such as the above have led to speculation about the future of pluggables. And there’s broad consensus that reports of the early demise of pluggables is misplaced. Arabzadeh envisages coexistence between CPO and pluggables, given that the latter “bring configurability to the Ethernet switch.” Pluggables themselves are evolving. “It
Automated Assembly and Testing Machines for High-end Photonic Components, Devices and PICs.
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ISSUE 30 | Q3 2022
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