Mellanox Readies First 200 Gb/s Silicon Photonics Devices 

Mellanox Technologies will announce an “important milestone” on the road to high data rate 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet networks during the Optical Fiber Conference this week in Anaheim, Calif. The company will demonstrate 50 Gb/s silicon photonics optical modulators and detectors, which will comprise key elements of 200 Gb/s and 400 Gb/s LinkX cables and transceivers.

“We are the first company to lay out a strategy for 200 Gb/s that’s based on the very same QSFP form factor that 40 Gigabit networks, 56 Gb/s in the case of InfiniBand, and 100 Gigabit networks in the case of InfiniBand and Ethernet are all based on,” states Arlon Martin, senior director of marketing at Mellanox Technologies.

The 200 Gb/s target assumes a 4-lane port and a 50 Gb/s signal rate. With 36 4x QSFP ports on the front panel of Mellanox’s EDR Switch-IB, the 100 Gb/s switch delivers 7.2 Tb/s of aggregate throughput. Moving from QSFP28 to QSFP56 modules doubles the front panel density for next generation switches to a potential 14.4 Tb/s switching capacity.

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About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).