Once again, Acacia Communications will be heading to the beautiful city of Nice to attend and speak at Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) and DCI World on May 21-23. It’s our 6^th year at this show, but this year is extra special because 2019 marks Acacia’s 10-year anniversary.

This provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the company’s innovative track record, which has enabled coherent optical interconnect reductions in power, size and cost per 100G at a pace of approximately 40% per year. Through this continued innovation and working intimately with our customers, we have solved some of the toughest optical networking challenges in the industry. As we embark on Nice, we are thankful to have had the opportunity to help our customers succeed during the last 10 years, and we are excited about what we can do together in the future.

Also during the show, we are excited to have our own Tom Williams speak on a plenary panel titled “To the terabit & beyond – practicalities for coherent transmission.” He’ll be joined by executives from Cignal AI, Telecom Argentina, OIF and ADVA, and their discussion will center around current operational demands and the potential offerings to support adoption through strategies and technologies. Tom’s panel is scheduled for Wed. May 22nd at 9:30 am. If you want more info on what will be discussed, check out the session description.

Some of the other key topics to be discussed include the 5G evolution, reducing costs, increasing capacity, data center connectivity, network automation, pluggable networks and much, much more!

As always, Acacia’s goal is to deliver the products that help our customers win. Below are two prominent trends we are seeing in the industry and how we plan to help our customers participate in those application areas. We think these will be two hot topic areas at NGON and DCI World and we look forward to discussing these in detail with customers, carriers, partners, cloud providers and OEMs.

Multi-Haul Solutions

Customers are finding enormous benefit using coherent transmission with varying baud rates and modulation modes applicable to multiple types of networks as described in this video. Our AC1200 module, powered by Acacia’s Pico DSP, delivers the flexibility and industry leading performance customers need for these multi-haul applications. Delivering 2Tbps in a footprint 40% smaller than 5×7 modules supporting 400Gbps today, and supported by customer validation testing, the AC1200 has achieved significant industry momentum over the last year. Multiple network equipment manufacturers (NEMs,) including Cisco, ADVA, and ECI Telecom are currently introducing systems based on AC1200 and it was successfully used in the first 400G transmission across the 6,600km trans-Atlantic Marea Cable. The AC1200 also features an innovative 3D shaping technology that offers network operators the flexibility to customize the AC1200 transmission to their network requirements. All these features and more are what led to Lightwave Magazine awarding the AC1200 the highest score of 5.0 in its Lightwave Innovations Reviews Program this past March.

Edge and Access Applications

Coherent pluggables are evolving to the edge to solve capacity issues in network access and edge applications, enabling carriers to reduce CapEx/OpEx and increase reach. Acacia’s 100G/200G CFP2 module, incorporating our Meru DSP, offers simple integration and a pay as you grow commercial model. There’s also a lot of buzz around the 400G CFP2 and future 400G QSFP-DD and OSFP 400G pluggables utilizing the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) specification for 400ZR to address key applications such as point-to-point data center interconnect (DCI) and IP over DWDM.

We are looking forward to a great show this year and of course, we can’t wait to spend a few days at the stunning venue Palais des Congrès Nice Acropolis. If you are lucky enough to be attending the show, we’d love to meet with you, discuss the trends we highlighted above, or even toast to our 10-year anniversary at the annual beach party. Contact us and someone will get back to you to set something up.

You can also follow our updates from the show on Twitter @AcaciaComms or #NGON2019.

We look forward to seeing you in Nice!

Achieving network optimization with 600G era coherent technology

The latest innovations in digital signal processing (DSP), optical, and mixed-signal component technologies have enabled the achievement of 600G-per-wavelength transmission speeds. High modulation orders (e.g., up to 64QAM) and high baud rates (e.g., up to ~70Gbaud) are now possible. In addition to this high speed achievement, these technologies also introduce advanced capabilities that allow the flexible fine-tuning of the optical transmission resulting in capacity optimization. Today’s coherent technology enables common optical hardware to achieve the high-performance finesse of a long-distance link, the sheer raw capacity for shorter DCI/edge links, and everything in between. This is the reason why some refer to 600G era coherent technology as multi-haul technology since the same set of hardware can address long-haul, metro, and DCI/edge networks.

Recently introduced, the Acacia AC1200 coherent module, powered by Acacia’s Pico DSP, a low-power solution based on 16 nm CMOS technology incorporates algorithms and processing power to address a wide range of applications. The AC1200 also includes a silicon photonics integrated circuit (PIC), and high-speed RF electronics to achieve 1.2Tbps capacity by using two wavelengths operating at 600Gbps each. The AC1200 is a leading product in the 600G era offering key capabilities that feature high-performance and high-flexibility, with the goal of enabling network operators to improve efficiency and maximize capacity utilization while reducing network costs.

Acacia recently published a white paper – Network Optimization in the 600G Era – that looks at long-haul, metro, and DCI/edge application and how the AC1200 provides benefits for each of these applications. Check it out to learn more.