ECOC 2023: Marvell first with 800G ZR/ZR+ DCI modules

Technologies and Products

Marvell Technology has announced COLORZ 800, which the company says is the industry’s first family of 800 Gbps ZR/ZR+ pluggable modules for scaling data centre interconnects (DCIs) rapidly, economically. The modules incorporate Marvell’s new Orion 800 Gbps coherent DSP and silicon photonics platform, which integrates multiple discrete components into a single die, providing up to 800 Gbps of bandwidth for DCI links up to 500km. COLORZ 800 can also be enabled for connections up to 1,200km operating at 400/600 Gbps to replace traditional transport equipment across a greater range of cloud infrastructure.

Marvell says COLORZ 800 lowers the capital cost of DCI by up to 75% compared to traditional rack-based DCI boxes with embedded DSPs while cutting operating expenses such as power, rack space and real estate. Additionally, it doubles the speed while lowering cost per bit and power per bit by up to 30% compared to existing solutions.

“With data centre bandwidth doubling every few years, pluggable modules represent the technology of choice for cloud and service providers to scale quickly and effectively,” said Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst for Optical Components at Cignal AI. “Our conservative forecast calls for nearly 300,000 shipments of 800 Gbps-capable pluggable modules a year by 2027

“The new level of performance delivered by COLORZ 800 greatly expands the use cases and opportunities for coherent pluggable modules,” said Josef Berger, associate vice president of marketing, Optical Group at Marvell. “The new modules further extend our strategy of helping cloud providers develop infrastructure that can keep up with the pace of AI and other workloads.”

Marvell will demonstrate COLORZ 800 and Orion at the ECOC 2023, in Glasgow, Scotland, and the modules are expected to sample in 4Q23.

For more information, visit www.marvell.com