ACADEMIA

Will work on future standards encompassing CMOS Photonics capabilities to bring cost effective, high performance optical technology to market: Luxtera Inc., the world leader in CMOS Photonics, today announced it has joined the Ethernet Alliance, an industry-led organization committed to the success and expansion of Ethernet technology. Luxtera’s CMOS Photonics technology breaks cost barriers faced by existing optical transceiver technologies, enabling wide adoption of high-performance optical interconnect as an economically viable alternative to legacy low-performance copper interconnects. As a member of this Ethernet Alliance, Luxtera promotes CMOS Photonic technology for Ethernet applications to significantly decrease associated costs while increasing performance. To date, 10G Ethernet has not achieved the levels of adoption the market had expected. Existing optical 10G optical transceivers are expensive, limiting the deployment of this technology. Emerging 10GBASE-T copper technologies are saddled with high power consumption, large footprint and large latency, which constrain their wide adoption in switch and server applications. The technology Luxtera offers integrates both optical and electronic circuits, including modulators, photodetectors, TIA and LA on a single CMOS die, bringing the performance of optics down to an attractive price point. “By joining the Ethernet Alliance, we’re able to join forces with other major players in the industry to evangelize the benefits of CMOS Photonics technology, and to apply the technology to high speed optical transceiver applications, including 10G and 100G Ethernet,” said Marek Tlalka, vice president of marketing of Luxtera. “The alternative technologies that are currently available are either too expensive, or have limitations slowing the wide adoption of 10G Ethernet. Luxtera’s goal is to offer a technology that will be quickly adopted to ease these pain points.” The Ethernet Alliance is designed to be an organization that will exist as long as Ethernet does. The group sponsors activities that demonstrate the technical viability and usability of Ethernet technologies to consumers and smooth technology adoption, provides a cohesive voice to clearly explain Ethernet projects, develops broad company participation amongst member companies, coordinates efforts amongst Ethernet technologies, position Ethernet’s co-existence with complimentary technologies and into evolving markets, and demonstrates Ethernet’s viability in those new markets and applications. "Nearly all traffic on the Internet originates or terminates with an Ethernet connection,” said Brad Booth, president of the Ethernet Alliance. “The Ethernet Alliance and its members look forward to working with Luxtera to promote IEEE 802 Ethernet solutions in new and exciting applications." To learn more about the benefits of membership and what it means to be a member of the Ethernet Alliance, visit www.ethernetalliance.org/join.