AppliedMicro demos single-wavelength 100G PAM4 silicon

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (NASDAQ:AMCC) has used OFC 2016 to show off what it asserts is the first 100G PAM4 single-wavelength silicon. The communications semiconductor company believes the silicon will find use for 400 Gigabit Ethernet applications (a 4x100G PSM4-like approach is one of the PMDs; see "IEEE P802.3bs Task Force adopts serial 100G for 400 Gigabit Ethernet"), as well as for 100-Gbps QSFP28 modules.

AppliedMicro has used 16-nm CMOS FINFET technology for the silicon. The offering leverages the company's 56-Gbaud ADC/DAC, backplane SerDes, and programmable low-power DSP. Tier 1 customers are already at work on 100G single-laser module designs based on the silicon, the company asserts.

"Demand for 100G Ethernet is being driven by cloud services and hyperscale data centers," said Omar Hassen, associate vice president of connectivity business, AppliedMicro. "Existing solutions will not be able to meet the power and cost points required by today's data centers. Our low power 16-nm FINFET solution enables 100G PAM4 single laser solutions in QSFP28 form factors and serves as a key breakthrough for 400G PAM4 Ethernet."

"The Web-scale data center community has shown a propensity for rapid technology adoption – accelerating and compressing product life cycles," said Ian Redpath, principal analyst, Ovum. "For the data center intra-connect world, Ovum has forecast a rapid transition from 40G to 100G solutions. The quicker a single-lambda 100G solution can be brought to market, the broader its market window in the emerging 100G data center intra-connect market. AppliedMicro's single-laser PAM4 solution has the potential to capture a first mover advantage in this compelling market opportunity."

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