June 29, 2009 -- Finisar has unveiled its C.wire, a 150 gigabit per second (Gbps) optical link for storage, data center, and high-performance computing connectivity. According to the company, based on the CXP form factor, the C.wire active optical cable (AOC) utilizes fiber optic technology to transmit parallel high-speed data in 100+ Gbps applications such as InfiniBand, 100G Ethernet, and proprietary high-speed interconnections.
The C.wire product offerings include a 12 x 12.5 Gbps cable for proprietary interconnects and a 12 x 10 Gbps cable for InfiniBand 12xQDR and 100GbE applications. Finisar demonstrated the cable at the recent (June 22-24) International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'09) in Hamburg, Germany.
"Active optical cables are quickly becoming the next generation interconnects of choice for high-speed data center and HPC connectivity," comments Jan Meise, director of strategic marketing at Finisar Corporation. "C.wire represents the third member of Finisar's cable family and is a clear demonstration of our commitment to providing breakthrough cable technology that will ensure 100G computing connectivity as early as 2010."
Finisar contends that, with the increase in I/O bandwidth required by next generation CPUs, protocols such as InfiniBand and Ethernet need very high speed connectivity solutions for next-generation data center architectures. Aggregation switches, stacked switches and meshed network topologies need to deploy cabling solutions which are beyond the bandwidth and distance limitations available in copper.
Finisar says its C.wire provides the smallest footprint of any cable solution available today for applications requiring data throughput of 100 Gbps and beyond. The active link transmits parallel 12 x 12.5 Gbps data bi-directionally over a multimode fiber (MMF) ribbon cable. Its low-power, small bend radius and high-density make it a suitable choice for growing data centers and HPC clusters.
"Finisar's C.wire will drive data center connectivity to new levels," offers Alan Benner, senior technical staff member at IBM Corporation and chair of the ElectroMechanical Working Group for the InfiniBand Trade Association. "With InfiniBand QDR 40 Gbps server connectivity available today and 120 Gbps coming soon, we need solutions like Finisar's active optical cables to drive higher density switches at lower power."
"With C.wire you can now get connections above 100 Gbps anywhere in the data center without worrying about whether you need copper or optics," adds Karen Liu, vice president of tech research consultancy Ovum RHK. "Aside from operation simplicity, Finisar's innovation addresses these increasingly urgent issues as data centers grow in both size and speed: power consumption, density and reach."
On the Web:
www.finisar.com/cables
www.supercomp.de