POET Infinity chiplet-based transmitter platform launched for 400G, 800G and 1.6T data-center solutions
News: Optoelectronics
3 March 2023
POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — a designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer and photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for the data-center, telecom and artificial intelligence (AI) markets — has announced POET Infinity, a chiplet-based transmitter platform for 400G, 800G and 1.6T pluggable transceivers and co-packaged optics solutions. The firm is showcasing a live demonstration of early samples at in booth #5311 the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC 2023) in San Diego, CA, USA (7-9 March).
The POET Infinity chiplet incorporates 100G PAM4 directly modulated lasers (DML), DML drivers and an integrated optical multiplexer for a complete 400GBASE-FR4 transmitter solution on a chip. The small size of the chiplet and a daisy-chain architecture enable side-by-side placement of multiple chiplets to achieve 800G and 1.6T speeds. Pluggable transceiver customers can use two Infinity chiplets to achieve 800G in a 2xFR4 transmitter in a QSFP-DD or OSFP package, or use four Infinity chiplets for 1.6T 4xFR4 solutions in an OSFP-XD package. The POET Infinity product line carries forward POET’s differentiation of all passive alignments and monolithically integrated waveguides, multiplexers and demultiplexers, which translates to lower cost, power and ease-of-assembly benefits to customers.
“Our entire team has worked hard on this project, and we are thrilled with the early test results of this unique platform that is expected to be widely embraced by transceiver module manufacturers and the data-center market,” says chairman & CEO Suresh Venkatesan. “DML lasers have proven to be the most reliable and cost-effective solution for high-volume deployments, and the POET Optical Interposer enables close integration of electronics and photonics within the chip and the module for exceptional performance at super-high data rates,” he adds. “We are grateful to Lumentum for all of the support they have provided to POET to make their most advanced 56GBaud DML lasers a key part of our market-leading project.”
POET plans to highlight the small size of the Infinity optical chiplets in an 800G QSFP-DD transceiver module at the OFC exhibition. The transceiver module will have an 800G receive optical engine with integrated transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and two Infinity chiplets along with an 800G digital signal processor (DSP) on a QSFP-DD printed circuit board and mechanical housing, demonstrating the ease of assembly and close integration of the transceiver components.
