Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Thursday, March 28, 2024

OpenOptics MSA Consortium Releases WDM Specification for Intra Datacenter Connectivity 

RANOVUS Inc., a leading provider of multi-terabit interconnect solutions for data center and communications networks announces the OpenOptics MSA publication of the industry’s first foundational Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) specification for an interoperable 100G WDM standard for 2 kilometer reach, addressing the challenges with the explosive growth in data center connectivity requirements.

“Our OpenOptics MSA collaboration with industry leaders has resulted in the definition of a foundational WDM specification for data center network connectivity, and having terabit scalability on a single mode fiber pair infrastructure,” said Saeid Aramideh, chief marketing and sales officer for RANOVUS. “The availability of this specification is a major milestone for our industry which we believe will not only accelerate the adoption of silicon-photonics based WDM solutions for the data center market, but also allow for a scalable terabit infrastructure for next generation datacenter architectures.”

The WDM specification brings together 1550nm WDM laser and silicon photonics for QSFP and optical engine based solutions, enabling lowest-cost, highest density, and highest bandwidth with single mode fiber pair connectivity, to enable data centers to use up to 32 or more channels per fiber strand.

“Previously, there was no standard for anything beyond 100Gb/s,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Now, the industry will have an architecture standard that scales to a terabit and beyond on existing fiber, substantially reduces the cost of hyperscale data center networks.”

The OpenOptics MSA consortium presented its proposed specification at the OCP U.S. Summit 2015 and announced new additions to its membership. The OpenOptics MSA membership now includes RANOVUS, Mellanox, Oracle, Ciena, Vertilas and Ghiasi Quantum.

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