Quantifi Photonics Announces PAM4 BERT and 288-Channel Power Meter

Together with a new 288-channel power meter, the new products mark Quantifi Photonics’ commitment to high-channel-count testing.

SAN DIEGO, California – March 7, 2022 – Quantifi Photonics today announced the company will debut its PXI-based PAM4 BERT and 288-channel Optical Power Meter at OFC 2022 in San Diego, CA, March 8-10. Both products provide a flexible path forward to addressing high density, high-capacity standards and drastically improving parallel test capacity for high-volume transceiver manufacturing.

Bandwidth-intensive computing applications such as data centers for machine learning and AI devices are rapidly demanding increasing bandwidth capabilities – from 200G to 400G and soon to 800G and beyond. Manufacturers of the equipment these applications rely on, such as optical transceivers, need to increase capacity and meet these speed and bandwidth demands without drastically impacting production area space and or power consumption. Current optical transceiver test technology is bulky, expensive, and difficult to scale – leaving manufacturers with limited options to satisfy quickly approaching test requirements.

Scaling Current Optical Transceiver Test Capabilities with PXI

Quantifi Photonics BERT-1102, a new PXI-based 29G PAM4 BERT, brings 8 lanes of 29Gbaud PAM4 in a single PXI module and the ability to scale to 64 channels in a single PXI chassis and up to 512 channels by chaining 8 chassis together. With a built-in, distributed clock, the PAM4 BERT reduces cabling and maintains a small, streamlined footprint. 

Built on open, modular, proven PXI technology, the PAM4 BERT is used alongside a module compliance board, oscilloscope, and intuitive software. The new single-platform transceiver test solution reduces complexity, allowing engineers to increase test efficiency and accelerate time to market.

“The PXI PAM4 BERT is a great step forward on our roadmap to deliver integrated, high-channel-count transceiver testing on the PXI platform,” said Iannick Monfils, CTO of Quantifi Photonics. “We’re committed to helping engineers solve the challenges of extremely high volume, high-channel-count test applications that allow them to innovate through 400G and 800G bandwidth developments without being held back by test bottlenecks.”

Quantifi Photonics BERT-1102 PAM4 29Gbaud Bit-Error-Rate-Tester

Bringing Channel Density to the Power Meter

Quantifi Photonics Power-1410, a new high-density optical power meter, continues this same thread of density and efficiency, scaling to 288 parallel channels – a 10x improvement in density over current commercially-available solutions. Such extreme channel count instruments will be a key requirement for manufacturers as they roll out 800G and co-packaged optical network infrastructures. Both products use SCPI programming, allowing engineers to integrate them easily with third-party equipment.

The combination of Quantifi Photonics’ expert support to help clients engineer the exact solution and an intuitive GUI that is easy for users to operate without software development expertise, makes the PXI PAM4 BERT and 288-Channel Optical Power Meter efficient, easy-to-use solutions .

Learn more about the PXI PAM4 BERT and 288-Channel Optical Power Meter or visit  booth #4600 at OFC.