Source Photonics today announced volume shipments of its 100G QSFP28 LR4 and LR4 lite products from its expanded state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. Since demonstrating the products at OFC 2014 in San Francisco, Source Photonics has made extensive investments in its wafer fab and fully-automated advanced 100G TOSA and ROSA manufacturing lines. In parallel to the roll-out of the advanced TOSA and ROSA manufacturing lines, Source Photonics has expanded matching 100G capacity in its transceiver module assembly and test line to support aggressive volumes projected by industry analysts. “Our current forecast reflects the increased urgency of hyperscale datacenter builders to ramp 100GbE in their switching fabrics,” says Dale Murray, Principal Analyst for LightCounting Market Research.“This market wants to go directly to the QSFP28 form factor.”
The QSFP28 form factor represents the most compact 100G interfaces available, and enables datacenter and network operators to achieve the maximum front-plate density. Two versions of the transceivers now shipping in volume are available: A 100GBase-LR4 compliant product, and a 2-km reach version targeted at high-density datacenter applications. “The market interest in our small formfactor 100G products has been tremendous. Featuring a typical power consumption of less than 3W including full duplex CDR for a wide range of use cases, it is interoperable with standard IEEE LR4 larger form factor 100G optics”, says Mark Heimbuch, CTO of Source Photonics.“Combined with our manufacturing investments, we are very excited to be able to support our lead Tier-1 customers’ ramp to volume.” Source Photonics will be hosting a live demonstration of the QSFP28 module operating in an Arista 7280SE-68 Top-of-Rack switch on March 24-26, 2015 at the OFC show in Los Angeles Convention Center booth number 2301.
In addition to the 100G QSFP28 LR4 and LR4 Lite, Source Photonics is also shipping the 100G CFP4 LR4, designed for router and transport systems and supporting multi-rate Ethernet and OTU4 applications, from the same manufacturing line.