Ixia and TE Connectivity to demo 400 GbE OSFP solution

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Ixia and TE Connectivity say they will stage a live demonstration this week of 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) traffic with an Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable (OSFP) solution.

OSFP is a new pluggable form factor with eight high speed electrical lanes that supports 400 Gbps (8 x 50G) data rates while allowing up to 32 OSFP ports per 1RU front panel – thus potentially enabling 12.8 Tbps per 1U.

Because 400G optics will require more power than 100G optics, OSFP addresses this issue by using an integrated heat-sink that significantly improves the thermal performance and enables modules with up to 16W power in a switch chassis with conventional airflow, Ixia said.

In addition, the form factor volume supports packaging of both client side and line side optical solutions (DWDM and/or coherent), as well as supporting 26 AWG direct attach copper cable assemblies for maximum reach.

Ixia says that OSFP is the only optimal 400-Gbps form factor solution to demonstrate this combination of features and enhanced performance.

The live demo can be seen at the Ixia Booth at Interop Tokyo this week in Chiba, Japan. The demo will feature Ixia and TE working together to send and receive IEEE802.3bs compliant, line rate 400 GbE traffic via 50 Gbps four-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM4) electrical lanes over the OSFP form factor with TE’s new OSFP connector, cage, and 1m copper cable assembly.

“The combination of Ixia’s signaling technology and TE’s OSFP interconnect expertise enables this 400 Gbps demonstration, providing solutions for customers who want to push the limits of connectivity and data capability,” said Eric Himelright, vice president of Product Management at TE Connectivity’s Data and Devices business unit.

The 400GbE ecosystem has been designed to address the growing bandwidth requirements of expanding hyperscale data centers.

“400 GbE technology is crucial to reducing the cost per bit of data traffic, especially as the global growth in cloud computing and big data is driving a massive increase in machine-to-machine traffic and east-west communication in web-scale data centers,” said Matt Bergeron, Chief Technology Officer at Ixia. “However, the development of 400 GbE optics is quite challenging. Ixia is participating in the OSFP Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) to help organizations reduce the obstacles associated with 400 GbE adoption.”

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