Eight Industry Stakeholders Collaborate To Increase Pluggable Transceiver Speeds To 800 GBPS

Oct 7, 2019

Broadcom, Cisco, Finisar, Intel, Juniper Networks, Marvell, Molex and Samtec have announced a new QSFP-DD800 Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) Group to advance the development of high-speed, double-density quad small form factor pluggable (QSFP-DD800) modules to support 800 Gbps connectivity. The MSA group will help to address the increased global bandwidth consumption by enabling very high bandwidth interfaces.

The MSA founder-promoters include Broadcom, Cisco, Finisar, Intel, Juniper Networks, Marvell, Molex and Samtec.

The new QSFP-DD800 interface expands on the QSFP-DD, a pluggable form factor with an eight-lane electrical interface widely adopted by the latest Ethernet switches. This MSA will enable QSFP-DD800’s eight electrical lanes to operate at 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) each, by providing technical solutions for 800 Gbps module and connector systems. It will also define a module, connector, stacked connector and a hybrid connector that is a BiPass/Flyover variant which can eliminate the signal losses on a traditional PCB. The primary objective of the MSA Group is to define the specifications and promote industry adoption of the QSFP-DD800. The new QSFP-DD800 specification is intended to be backward compatible with QSFP-DD, QSFP28 and QSFP+ modules and cables in order to address the upcoming industry demands of 25.6 Tb/s scale systems supporting dense 100 GbE or dense 400 GbE interfaces.

“Through continued strategic collaborations with our MSA Promoters, we are developing the physical specifications that will enable the interoperability of optical transceiver modules, connectors, cages and DAC cables from multiple vendors to assure a robust ecosystem,” said Scott Sommers, founding member and MSA co-chair. “We are thrilled to collaborate together as a group and further develop and provide next-generation designs that evolve with the changing technology landscape.’’

“Leveraging the technical innovations from QSFP-DD, the time is right to collaborate with our MSA partners to lay the foundations for the next generation systems and modules” said Mark Nowell, founding member and MSA co-chair. “The QSFP-DD form factor continues to be the cornerstone for the next step in pluggable module performance and density, while extending the industry’s investment, experience, cost structure and backward compatibility from prior generations.”

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