NTT Electronics Announces Power-Efficient Industry-First 16nm 100G/200G Coherent DSP
- Ultra-Low Power Consumption Less Than 10W per 100G Enables a Terabit-per-second Transponder Blade -
March 2016

OFC2016, Anaheim, CA - Monday, March 21, 2016 -

NTT Electronics (NEL), a leading supplier of coherent Digital Signal Processor (DSP) solutions to system and module manufacturers worldwide, today announced industry-first 16nm ultra-low power DSP for both 100G QPSK long-haul and 200G 16QAM Metro optical links. The new 16nm DSP "ExaSPEED 200" consumes far less than 10W per 100Gbps in its 200G operation mode, doubles the power efficiency compared to the previous generation 20nm 100G Low Power DSP [ *1 ], and leverages industry-leading 200G DSP core [ *2 ] and cutting-edge 16nm CMOS fin-FET mixed-signal technologies in collaboration with Broadcom [ *3 ].

The new ExaSPEED 200 integrates enhanced forward error correction (EFEC) based on the de facto standard staircase code. The built-in EFEC enhances line-side interoperability up to Metro reach, and accelerates open networking and system hardware disaggregation. "Large Service Providers are moving towards SDN-based flexible optical transport architecture to dynamically manage, plan, provision, and re-optimize optical networks with substantially reduced cost," said Haruhiko Ichino, NEL Executive Vice President and General Manager of Broadband System & Device Business Group. "We are strongly committed to pioneering innovation in the coherent DSP in order to to meet their expectation in flexible, software configurable optical "white box" elements that are modular, with interoperable subsystems from multiple vendors", he added.

In addition to the line-side interoperability, the new ExaSPEED 200 will be provided with Blade Design Suite, an advanced tool suite consisting of a link performance simulator, reference design board, and Software Development Kit (SDK) including the support of multivendor CFP2-ACO auto-calibration. The tool suite is invaluable in accelerating design of high-port-count transponder blades that can achieve one Tera-bit-per-second or higher capacity. "Keysight Technologies' N4391A optical modulation analyzer works with custom DSP algorithms, to let users delve into their designs' performance," said Dr. Joachim Peerlings, Senior Marketing Director of Keysight Technologies Digital & Photonic Test Division. "By uploading the NEL ExaSPEED DSP algorithms, designers of coherent components, modules, and systems, for 100G and beyond, can get more accurate and realistic test results faster for deepest insight."

NEL and Keysight will show a live demonstration of 200G 16QAM fiber transmission and demodulation by NEL ExaSPEED 200 on Keysight N4391A OMA in Fujitsu Optical Components (FOC) Booth #1221 at the OFC2016 trade show in Anaheim, California, March 22-24, 2016. NEL will also unveil the new ExaSPEED 200 Blade Design Suite in its Booth #2529 with the support of major CFP2-ACO suppliers including Finisar, FOC, Lumentum, NEC, and Oclaro.

NEL plan to start sampling the ExaSPEED 200 early in the second quarter of 2016 and production release in the second half of 2016.