At OFC 2023, OIF will host more than 30 member companies for its largest-ever interoperability demonstration, a special technology session and reception to commemorate its 25th anniversary and will participate in two show floor program sessions showcasing OIF’s work. OIF also announced the availability of a white paper highlighting the findings from a 400ZR Interoperability Plugfest held in January.

“This year’s OFC is the ideal platform for OIF and its members to showcase multivendor interoperability and to celebrate 25 years of interop work critical in moving the industry forward,” said Nathan Tracy, TE Connectivity and OIF Market Awareness & Education Committee Co-Chair, Physical & Link Layer (PLL).

Record-setting Interoperability Demo – 400ZR, Co-Packaging, CEI-112G & CEI-224G and CMIS

OIF’s multivendor interoperability demo at OFC will feature 34 member companies in live demonstrations in OIF’s booth, #5101, in four areas: 400ZR optics, Co-Packaging architectures, Common Electrical I/O (CEI) architectures and Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) implementations.

400ZR Demo

OIF’s 400ZR project is critical in facilitating the reduction of cost and complexity for high bandwidth data center interconnects and promoting interoperability among optical module manufacturers. This year’s public demonstration includes nearly double the number of participants over last year, including links to multiple collaborator’s booths using OFCnet, OFC's high-speed optical network. The demo consists of a full implementation of 400GE across a 75km, DWDM ecosystem using multiple module, router, open line system, and test equipment vendors, demonstrating that the project achieved its interoperability goals.

Co-Packaging Demo

OIF continues to lead the industry’s efforts to enable co-packaging solutions utilizing interoperable electrical and optical interfaces featuring low power and high bandwidth edge densities. This co-packaging demo will show OIF’s considerable progress toward that objective since OFC 2022. This year’s interop demonstrations include pivotal multi-vendor elements to enable co-packaging architectures, including live demos for the External Laser Small Form Factor Pluggable (ELSFP) external laser source form factor, co-packaged 3.2T copper cable assemblies, an operating linear optical module, and a variety of optical connectivity solutions as well as an expanded set of OIF member participants representing the growing ecosystem.

CEI Demo

As the industry looks forward to higher data rates and increased throughput for the next generation of systems based on 224 Gbps per lane, new specifications and technologies will be required. OIF is leading the charge on 224G hardware interconnection application spaces and definitions, demonstrating 224G transmitter and receiver SerDes operation across different vendor channels.

Multiple live CEI demonstrations featuring interoperability amongst 16 participating members prove the critical role OIF serves as well as the developing supplier ecosystem. The CEI-112G demonstrations will feature multi-party silicon supplier interoperability over various Long Reach (LR) channels, including mated compliance boards, PCB channels, direct attach passive, active, and linearly boosted copper cable channels. Optics modules demonstrating VSR links will also be on display, as well as multi-vendor interop traversing single mode and multimode CEI Linear interfaces. Each configuration demonstrates the technical viability of 112 Gbps operation and multiple industry form factors, including SFP, QSFP, OSFP and QSFP-DD. The demo will also show a measured far-end linear eye diagram on an oscilloscope with analysis to show an example of the silicon signal integrity.

CMIS Implementations Demo

CMIS has established itself as the management interface of choice for next generation pluggable modules, capable of managing both simple and advanced modules. CMIS provides a well-defined mechanism to initialize and manage optical and copper modules in a standard way, while still providing the capability to provide custom functionality. This commonality makes integration into different host platforms easier for both the host vendor and the module vendor. The live CMIS demo will show a variety of CMIS managed modules and a copper cable in routers and switches from different vendors and showcases how modules are managed in a real-world application.

Participating Companies

The live and static interoperable optical networking solutions demo will feature 34 OIF member companies - ADVA; Alphawave Semi; Amphenol; Astera Labs; Cadence Design Systems, Inc.; Casela Technologies; Ciena; Cisco Systems; Coherent; ColorChip Group; EXFO; InnoLight Technology; Juniper Networks; Keysight Technologies; Lumentum; MACOM Technology Solutions Inc.; Marvell; Microchip Technology; Molex; MultiLane, Inc.; NEC Corporation; Nokia; O-Net Technologies; Precision Optical Transceivers, Inc.; Quantifi Photonics; Samtec; Senko Advanced Components; Sicoya; Source Photonics; Sumitomo Electric Industries; Synopsys; TE Connectivity; US Conec, and Wilder Technologies.

Special 25^th Anniversary Tech Showcase

To commemorate its 25^th anniversary during OFC, OIF will host a special one-hour session, “Bringing Order to Chaos – OIF,” on Wednesday, March 8 at 3 pm PT in Theater III.

This dynamic session will feature Stephen Hardy, editorial director of Lightwave, and a panel of industry analysts and OIF experts discussing how OIF has helped bring order to a chaotic marketplace over the past 25 years and debate the challenges ahead for OIF and the optical networking industry.

Attendees will learn:

– How OIF’s member-driven model leverages collaboration and consensus to solve complex industry challenges

– What current and trending challenges are in play

Panelists:

- Karl Gass, OIF PLL Working Group Optical Vice Chair

- Vladimir Kozlov, Founder and CEO, LightCounting

- Sterling Perrin, Senior Principal Analyst, Optical Networks and Transport, Heavy Reading

- Nathan Tracy, OIF Market Awareness & Education Committee Co-Chair, PLL; Technologist, System Architecture Team, TE Connectivity

- Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst, 650 Group

25^th Anniversary Reception

A celebration reception will be held Wednesday, March 8, at 4 pm PT at OIF booth #5101.

Show Floor Programs

Wednesday, March 8, 1 pm-2 pm PT in Theater II

“Defining 800ZR and 800LR; An OIF Update”

Moderator: Karl Gass, OIF PLL Working Group Optical Vice Chair

Panelists:

- Josef Berger, Associate Vice President, Optical and Copper Connectivity Group, Marvell

- Sebastien Gareau, Systems Architect, Ciena

- Scott Wilkinson, Lead Analyst, Optical Components, Cignal AI

- Tom Williams, Director of Technical Marketing, Cisco Systems

Thursday, March 9, 12:15 pm-1:15 pm PT in Theater II

“Enabling Next Generation Co-Packaging Solutions”

Moderator: Jeff Hutchins, OIF PLL Working Group Co-Packaging Vice Chair and Board Member; CTO Office, Ranovus

Panelists:

- Kenneth Jackson, Product Marketing Director, Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations, USA

- Yi Tang, Principal Hardware Engineer, Cisco

- Nathan Tracy, OIF MA&E Committee Co-Chair, PLL; Technologist, System Architecture Team, TE Connectivity

- Richard Ward, Chief Technologist Data Connectivity, Astera Labs

400ZR Interoperability Plugfest White Paper

This new OIF white paper presents the methodology and results of an interoperability study of 400ZR transceivers conducted during a performance testing plugfest held in late January. Twelve different transceivers were cross-connected in a matrix of combinations (Tx-Rx) using a noise-loaded link to characterize the penalties associated with interoperability between suppliers. The white paper is available here.

About OIF

OIF is where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done. Celebrating 25 years of effecting forward change in the industry, OIF represents the dynamic ecosystem of 140+ industry leading network operators, system vendors, component vendors and test equipment vendors collaborating to develop interoperable electrical, optical and control solutions that directly impact the industry’s ecosystem and facilitate global connectivity in the open network world. Connect with OIF at @OIForum, on LinkedIn and at http://www.oiforum.com.

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