Microsemi, a provider of semiconductor solutions, announced that ECI has appointed the company as its primary OTN solutions provider, and recently selected the DIGI-G4 fourth generation products for its Apollo family of packet optical transport platforms.
Microsemi’s DIGI OTN processors are designed to enable ECI to leverage a single software development model to address diverse end market hardware configurations, helping to reduce R&D costs and speed product development.
Microsemi noted that despite the rapid adoption of packet services, client services are often at rates of 10 Gbit/s and below, requiring OTN switching to make the wide deployment of 100 Gbit/s optical connectivity cost-effective. In addition, cloud service providers require high capacity, low latency connectivity between geographically distributed data centres. ECI’s Apollo solution uses Microsemi’s DIGI OTN processors to address these challenges and meet a range of market requirements.
The DIGI offering enables ECI to deliver solutions including: high-density 100/400 Gbit/s capacity client and line-side cards for P-OTPs; multi-terabit OTN and packet/MPLS switching platforms; fabric-less switching platforms for metro networks; 100 Gbit/s transponders and muxponders; and wavelength and sub-wavelength level encryption solutions.
Microsemi’s DIGI family of OTN processors have been implemented in service provider and hyperscale data centre WANs worldwide, with the DIGI-G4 designed to address the needs of 400 Gbit/s designs while consuming a claimed 50% of the power per 100 Gbit/s port of other solutions. DIGI-G4 can also support encrypted 100 Gbit/s OTN connections for a new generation of software-defined networking (SDN)-ready solutions.
The Microsemi OTN processors also provide the capacity, security and flexibility required for line cards within packet optical transport platforms (P-OTPs), ROADM/WDM and data centre interconnect (DCI) platforms. Combined with a field-hardened SDK, the integrated DIGI solution provides a common hardware and software platform for multi-terabit OTN packet optical equipment.
Microsemi claims that the common software architecture for DIGI OTN processors allows OEMs to reduce the development cost for multiple 100 and 400 Gbit/s hardware platforms by over 25%.
Further key features of the DIGI-G4 solution include: single-chip 4 x 100 Gbit/s solution for OTN switched line cards; 100 Gbit/s gearbox for connection to CFP2/4 and QSFP28 transceivers; high density 10/40/100 Gbit/s multi-service support, including Ethernet, IP/MPLS and SONET/SDH; 25 Gbit/s granularity framer to DSP interface enabling line rates to match programmable modulation capabilities in coherent DSPs; multi-chip Interlaken interconnect for compact chassis DCI applications; OTN-SDK with adapter layer software.
