OFC: Acacia launches Coherent Interconnect Module

Technologies and Products

Building on the success of the AC1200 and the Pico DSP, Acacia has launched its Coherent Interconnect Module 8 (CIM 8), based on its newest DSP technology, the 8th generation Jannu 5nm CMOS DSP, which includes second generation 3D Shaping and continuous baud rate adjustment of up to 140Gbaud.  The new module is designed to achieve several industry firsts that separate it from competing solutions including the first single-carrier 1.2TB multi-haul pluggable module; the first coherent module to support 140Gbaud and the first 5nm multi-haul DSP.

Acacia says the CIM 8 provides high performance based on the same silicon photonics used in its high volume pluggable modules. In addition, the company says it is leveraging the investments being made in next-generation standardised solutions. Aligning these developments helps Acacia to accelerate time to market for both standardised and multi-haul products and benefit from the combined scale.

Acacia’s performance-optimised multi-haul coherent solutions have proven very popular for helping service providers meet the challenges they are facing. To date, says the company, Acacia has shipped more than 100,000 ports of its Pico Digital Signal Processor (DSP), which powers the company’s AC1200 1.2TB module. With 3D Shaping capabilities, including continuous baud rate adjustment available in the AC1200, the Pico-based products are deployed in over 100 networks across the globe and have been selected by three of the four largest hyperscalers.

“With over one hundred thousand ports shipped, Acacia’s Pico DSP is widely entrenched in networks around the globe and continues to provide network operators with a cost-effective way of scaling networks to meet rising bandwidth demands,” said Vlad Kozlov, founder and CEO, LightCounting Market Research. “When complemented by the new CIM 8 module with the Jannu DSP, Acacia is able to offer service providers an arsenal of performance optimised coherent solutions that deliver maximum capacity for any network, at any distance and any passband.”

Tom Williams, vice president of marketing at Acacia, told Optical Connections, “We used to get a lot of scepticism about silicon photonics for these kinds of applications, but I think now that that is old news. A lot of people are now trying to use silicon photonics, so we do think our silicon photonics is differentiated. We’ve been doing it for a long time and our team is really advanced, so we do still have differentiation in what we’re able to achieve in terms of performance and speed.”

Earlier in March 2022, Acacia, now part of Cisco, added to its portfolio of 400G coherent pluggable solutions based on its Greylock 7nm DSP, with the new Bright 400ZR+ and ER1 400G pluggable coherent optical modules.

For more information, visit www.acacia-inc.com