ECI selects Microsemi as primary OTN solutions provider

ECI, an early adopter of Microsemi’s DIGI OTN processors, recently selected DIGI-G4, the 4^th gen offering in the DIGI product family, on its Apollo family of packet optical transport platforms for leading telecom and cloud service providers around the world. Microsemi’s DIGI OTN processors enable ECI to leverage single software development to address diverse end market hardware configurations, minimising research and development (R&D) investments and accelerating time to revenue.

Core, metro and data centre networks drive a range of hardware platform and cost configurations that must be solved by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) such as ECI. According to market research firm IHS, 100G OTN ports in metro networks are growing at 45% annually through 2020. Even with the rapid growth of packet services, many of the client service rates are still at 10Gbps and below, which necessitate OTN switching in order to make mass deployment of 100G optical connectivity economical. In addition, cloud service providers need high capacity, secured and low latency connectivity between their geographically distributed data centres. ECI’s Apollo family leverages Microsemi’s DIGI OTN processors as a development vehicle to address these challenges, as well as a variety of end market requirements.

“ECI has chosen Microsemi as our primary OTN processor provider because it has allowed us to standardise a single hardware and software solution for the Apollo platform,” said Jimmy Mizrahi, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Business at ECI. “Our collaboration with Microsemi enables us to quickly introduce multiple system architectures and a wide portfolio of line cards to market, without the need to significantly increase our R&D investment, while delivering an uncompromised set of features for all the markets we serve.”

As the pioneer in enabling dense 100G ports and high capacity OTN switching, Microsemi’s DIGI family of OTN processors are deployed globally in service provider and hyperscale data centre Wide Area Networks (WANs) today. Microsemi’s DIGI-G4 addresses the needs of 400G designs at 50% of the power per 100G port, while enabling encrypted 100G OTN connections for a new gen of Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-ready solutions. It delivers the capacity, security and flexibility required for line cards in packet Optical Transport Platforms (P-OTPs), ROADM/WDM and optimised Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) platforms. Coupled with a field-hardened SDK, the highly integrated DIGI solution provides a common hardware and software platform to enable multi-terabit OTN packet optical equipment. By leveraging the common software architecture across the DIGI OTN processor family, OEMs can reduce development cost by more than 25% and realise significant time-to-market advantage in releasing multiple 100G and 400G hardware platforms.

With the DIGI total-solution offering, ECI can deliver:

• Dense 100G and 400G capacity client and line-side cards for P-OTPs.
• Multi-terabit OTN and packet/MPLS switching.
• Cost-optimised, fabric-less switching platforms for the metro.
• Dense 100G transponders and muxponders.
• Wavelength and sub-wavelength level encryption solutions.

“Microsemi values our long relationship with ECI in the optical transport market that spans from SDH to now OTN,” said Babak Samimi, Vice President and Business Unit Manager of Microsemi’s Communications Business Unit. “Our DIGI OTN processors are differentiated by power, density, security and software, and have been architected with the ability to serve as a single development platform for OEMs. ECI’s ability to leverage this benefit and transform it into a competitive advantage to lead in emerging markets highlights the value propositions of our DIGI product family.”

DIGI-G4’s innovations include:

• Industry’s first single-chip 4x100G solution for OTN switched line cards.
• Integrated 100G gearbox for direct connect to CFP2, CFP4 and QSFP28 transceivers.
• Industry’s highest density 10G, 40G and 100G multi-service support, including Ethernet, storage, Internet Protocol (IP)/MPLS and SONET/SDH.
• Industry’s first sub-wavelength OTN encryption solution to secure the cloud.
• Industry’s first 25G granularity flexible framer to Digital Signal Processing (DSP) interface providing scalable line rates to match the programmable modulation capabilities found in next gen coherent DSPs.
• Multi-chip Interlaken interconnect solutions for scalable compact chassis data centre interconnect applications.
• High performance OTN-SDK with adapter layer software, accelerating OEM time-to-market.