Today ETU-LINK will take you to talk about 400G optical transceiver, according to the well-known optical communication market research agencies predict, 2018-2020 global 400G optical transceiver market size will reach 0.56 billion US dollars, 280 million US dollars and 720 million US dollars, with the explosive growth of network traffic, 400G will undoubtedly be the dominant rate of the future market. In the current 400G optical module, the optical port side mainly uses 8 channels of 53Gbps PAM4 (400G-SR8, FR8, LR8), and the use of 4 channels of 106Gbps PAM4 (400G-DR4, FR4, LR4) to achieve 400G signal transmission; the use of 8 channels of 53Gbps PAM4 electrical signals on the port side.

The package types of 400G optical transceivers are OSFP and QSFP-DD, of which the QSFP-DD package size is smaller and more suitable for data center applications; the OSFP package size is slightly larger, because it can provide more power consumption, so it is more suitable for telecom applications. The following is a brief introduction to the 400G optical transceiver package type.

1. The full name of OSFP is Octal Small Form factor Pluggable. The standard is a new interface standard that is not compatible with existing optoelectronic interfaces.

2. QSFP-DD full name is Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable-Double Density, the solution is an extension of the QSFP interface, the original 4-channel interface added a line, increased to 8 channels, the so-called double density.

3. CFP8 is an extension of CFP4, the number of channels increased to 8 channels, the cost of the solution is higher, the need to use 16 25G lasers.

4. CWDM8 is an extension of the CWDM4 standard, the rate of each wavelength is 50G, and it can also reach 400G. Four new center wavelengths have been added, namely 1351/1371/1391/1411 nm.

5. The full name for COBO is consortium for on board optics, which means to put all optical components on the PCB. The main advantages of this solution are good heat dissipation and small size.

400G product system is gradually improved and standardized, 400G Ethernet (IEEE 802.3bs) was officially approved as early as December 2017, in the standard specification of forward error correction (FEC) and other new technologies, easy to improve the error performance, increase the credibility of data communication. At present, some suppliers in the industry have developed 400G switches according to relevant standards and put them on the market, such as Cisco 400G Nexus, Arista 400G 7060X4 series, Mellanox Spectrum-2, etc. 400G connection solutions are also booming, such as 400G DAC and 400G optical transceivers (including 400G QSFP-DD optical transceivers, 400G OSFP optical transceivers, 400G CFP8 optical transceivers, etc.), of which QSFP-DD will be expected to become the most popular 400G package with its own high density and low power consumption. With the standardization, commercialization and large-scale development of 400G Ethernet, the 400G product system will be gradually improved in the near future, and more 400G products will appear on the market.