Microchip and Acacia Team Up to Optimize Terabit-Scale Data Center Links
With a fourth-generation platform that uses Acacia’s Coherent Interconnect Module 8 (CIM 8) and Microchip Technologies’ META-DX2 Ethernet PHY to enable data transport rates of up to 1.2 Tbps, Microchip Technologies and Acacia are extending their ongoing partnership for optical Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and metro transport network solutions.
With the rise of AI and cloud computing services, the volume of data that needs to be shared between data centers and across metro networks is rapidly increasing. To meet these emerging requirements, tera-bit scale data transport solutions are now required.
Microchip and Acacia are providing a low power, bandwidth-optimized, scalable optical DCI and metro transport network solution that can satisfy the demands of next-generation data transport with their most recent fourth-generation interoperable solution.
Data center operators are boosting inter-datacenter traffic for load balancing and to distribute processing requirements across multiple data centers in order to fulfill the growing demand for their data processing capacity.
A metro transport network is used to move data between central offices and data centers located within a broader metropolitan area. Silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and proprietary, application-specific digital signal processing (DSP) chips are used in the construction of Acacia’s optical interconnect modules. These chips modulate and demodulate network digital data before it is transmitted across optical fiber.
Acacia’s technology is based on well-established, low-power complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits that provide a good mix of performance, dependability, and cost.
The CIM 8 is driven by Acacia’s 8th generation 5 nm CMOS Jannu DSP ASIC and offers 1.2 Tbps of data transmission capability over a single optical wavelength within a 150 GHz channel. It is intended for deployment in long-haul, metro, cloud/DCI, and underwater optical transport networks.
