Walking around the show floor at OFC 2018 it was hard not to be impressed with the important role that test and measurement plays in enabling innovation. A major push at this year’s event, which just wrapped up its week-long run in San Diego, centered on the development and production of advanced optical networking solutions for use in data centers.
As demonstrated at the event, Tektronix offers the industry’s most comprehensive set of 400G PAM test solutions including new 56 GBd support for both our real-time and equivalent time oscilloscopes.
In addition to demonstrations showing how these solutions can speed up debug tasks or improve production yield in our booth, Tektronix instruments found their way into the OFC booths of many of our customers from across the industry. In addition, Tektronix participated in an interoperability demonstration in the OIF (Optical Interoperability Forum) booth using the OIF PAM4 VSR standard at 50 Gb/s.
Below is a rundown on some of the customers using our equipment and what they were showing at the show. Then scroll down for snapshots of some of the actual booth setups, and be sure to check out our full range of PAM4 and coherent optical solutions for yourself.
Product segment: Optical transmitters/receivers
Demonstration: Single lambda bi-directional transceivers, 10 kHz – 10Gb/s with eye diagrams generated using Tektronix equipment to demonstrate quality.
Product segment: Data center inter connect, electronic communication subsystems
Demonstration: Tektronix DSA8300 equivalent time oscilloscope and 80C17 optical module were used to demonstrate 26GBd PAM4 optical eye at 53 Gb.
Product segment: Optical transmitters/receivers
Demonstration: Tektronix DSA8300 equivalent time oscilloscope was used for a technology demo of 50GBASE-LR SFP56 and 50GBASE-SR SFP56 PAM4 solutions.
Product segment: Datacenter interconnects
Demonstration: Used a Tektronix oscilloscope to produce eye diagrams and to verify signal quality.
Product segment: High bandwidth signal generator platform
Demonstration: Showcased performance of VEGA DAC 1002 signal generator using both real time and equivalent time Tektronix scopes.
Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF)
Focus: Interoperable optical networking solutions and services
Demonstration: Inphi and Xilinx SerDes generated traffic that was connected through the OIF CEI VSR standard at 50 Gb/s as well as through a Finisar 200GBASE-FR4 optical link. The interconnect included Amphenol, Molex, TE, and Yamaichi to demonstrate PAM4 interoperability.
SHF Communication Technologies
Product segment: Optical transmitters/receivers
Demonstration: Generated variations of PAM4 symmetric at 56 GBd.
Product segment: Photonic ICs
