Avago Technologies QSFP+ iSR4 White Paper

2nd July 2013

ES Admin

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Whitepaper

Avago Technologies is the first fibre optic module vendor to product release a fully compliant 40Gb Ethernet QSFP+ optical transceiver. Leveraging its history in delivering 850nm VCSEL based solutions, Avago QSFP+ modules deliver excellent high speed optical / electrical performance coupled with low power dissipation. Using bundled fibre cables and MPO connectors, port density is triple that of SFP+ modules, and power consumption is reduced from 1000 mW maximum per lane for SFP+ to 375 mW maximum per lane for QSFP+.

To further expand its portfolio of innovative parallel fibre optic products, Avago is releasing a new QSFP+ transceiver that is not only 40Gb Ethernet compliant, but also interoperable with any 10GBASE-SR compliant transceiver at link distances up to 100 meters over OM3 multi-mode fibre. It is named QSFP+ iSR4 with “i” for interoperable.

Introduction

With each passing day, the volume of digital information flowing through the world’s data networks grows at an ever increasing rate. The growth of server virtualization, cloud computing, and trend toward network convergence is forcing today’s Data Center networks to be faster and more efficient than ever. Legacy 1 Gigabit per second Ethernet access links are being replaced by 10 Gbps links due to the increases in server utilization obtained through Virtualization. Wireless computing needs that rely on applications served from cloud computing and the convergence of storage area and local area networking are driving data centers to reduce traffic latency by implementing cut-through switching and flatter network architectures.

By implementing a flatter (i.e. two-tier) switching architecture, a data center can reduce latency by an order of magnitude.

To keep up, higher performance switching hardware is needed to provide sufficient I/O bandwidth to avoid blocking. To accommodate the new demands for bandwidth, many newer access switches offer 48-ports of 10Gb Ethernet for connection to downstream servers and 2- or 4-ports of 40G Ethernet for connection to the core switches. These 40G interconnects, which are often implemented using QSFP+ transceivers, provide sufficient bandwidth to enable fully non-blocking switch fabrics.

Download the full White Paper below.