Emcore Announces QSFP Transceiver for Copper and Optical Media
Nov 27, 2006 8:00 AM
Emcore has announced the availability of its new family of Quad (four-lane) Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) devices for copper and fiber-optic media. The product family, QTR3600 (optical) and QTR3700 (copper), marks the next generation of parallel interconnects with increased port density in a hot-pluggable form factor, giving system designers flexibility and compatibility with existing pluggable-module infrastructures.
The optical modules are compliant with the QSFP MSA and will support four independent lanes of Ethernet or Fibre Channel datastreams or 4X SDR and DDR InfiniBand at distances up to 300m on multimode optical fiber. Copper versions based on the same QSFP form-factor with standard electrical cables will be capable of supporting data rates of 5Gbps per lane at distances of several meters depending on cable type.
The QTR3600 and QTR3700 devices are designed to enable extremely high-density interconnect in a variety of application environments, including enterprise data centers, high-performance computing, telecom central offices, defense, and high-end test equipment. Devices can be arranged in ganged or stacked configurations to allow system equipment manufacturers to double port density, thus increasing system data throughput and consequently reduce costs per gigabit per second.
The QTR3600 optical module is an extension on Emcore’s optical media converter family, the QTR3400 and QTR3500. Emcore has been shipping four-lane optical media converter products for more than two years. The optical QTR products use 850nm GaAs VCSELs and PIN detector technology integrated into four transmit and four receive channels with an industry-standard MTP/MPO parallel optical connector.
The QTR3700 fixed copper device is socket compatible with the optical QTR3600, offering customers the flexibility to optimize their system interconnect strategy for cost and performance.
“Being one of the leading suppliers of parallel interconnect products, we are excited about expanding our product portfolio with this z-axis, hot-pluggable form-factor,” says Dr. Robert Bryan, vice president and general manager of Emcore Fiber Optics Division. “Its compatibility with existing pluggable form-factors and migration path to even higher data rates such as InfiniBand QDR (~10Gbps per channel, 40Gbps aggregate) make this an attractive platform for our customers. Customers can continue to use the optical media converter technology for existing designs and now have a migration path for future designs.”
For more information, visit www.emcore.com.
