The gravity of Broadcom's new product offering
First, an article from our friend at HG Genuine and the Ethernet Alliance, Jim Theodoras.
Will it be 100G per lane, or will it jump straight to 200G (100G with PAM4). It depends on how each datacenter company (google, amazon, microsoft, etc.) wants to implement the technology into their data centers. But, the main point is that the entire industry is at an inflection point to where a full redesign is possible. This is what Michael Lebby saw coming four years ago when he talked about a rare "blue moon event" in the industry. He was working to get LWLG's tech designed into this shift we are now seeing four years later.
I think history will show his visionary abilities are second to none. He saw this coming and positioned the company years in advance of what we are now seeing.
Next, Broadcom's groundbreaking news of their 51.2T switch chip just released. The electronics to support single lane 200G optics is finally here.
In order for data centers to realize the 30% power savings we have heard from Broadcom, Cisco, Marvell, and LWLG, we need to see acceptance of the “next node” for electronics as well as photonics. So this 51.2T switch gives 800G optics two things. It will provide a platform for vendors to build a CPO switch as well as it gives a platform to build a standard pluggable switch capable of accepting 800G pluggable transceivers. We will see a mix of both types of devices and architectures moving forward. CPO is the likely culprit for AI and Machine Learning, while pluggables will be used in standard spine-leaf architectures used in the internet data centers as seen at Facebook and Amazon Web Services. Michael Lebby has stated LWLG's Polymer Photonics will be applied to both CPO and pluggables.
This is important because many CPO skeptics (like Mark Lutkowitz) believed we would be stuck at 25.6T switches until at least 2024. Furthermore, they believed CPO is not viable until 51.2T, but more likely the next gen 102.4T switches, which were thought to be delayed until the end of the decade.
The fact that Broadcom just released the 51.2T switch chip ahead of expectations shows that the electronics side of photonics is ready for 800G pluggables. As Michael has stated, the entire ecosystem is needed to support the next node. This includes not only the optics side of electro-optics (photonics), but also the electronic side as well. For example, in order to realize a 100G single lane modulator, you need an electrical interface capable of supporting this. This news from Broadcom shows that the electronics side is pushing the envelope to support next generation pluggables at 100G and 200G per lane. The 51.2T switch chip will also bring CPO to fruition as companies design their own switches based on Broadcom's new switch chip.
Posted Aug 22, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC