The successful testing demonstrates that multivendor standards-based pluggable modules can interoperate while achieving the performance required for data centre interconnects between regional cloud data centres spanning distances up to 500km, which is an industry first for 800G.
Cloud operators are scaling their infrastructure for AI services by building more regional data centres, which require optimised power and cost to interconnect.
Pluggable coherent modules and DSPs have increased bandwidth by 8X while reducing power consumption per bit by as much as 30% with each new generation. The emergence of a standards-based, multi-vendor ecosystem has further accelerated innovation and has helped to minimise the risk of vendor lock-in.
The 800G ZR/ZR+ optical modules used in the demonstration are all based on the Marvell Orion 800G coherent optical DSP. Modules from the three companies were used to showcase interoperable metro-distance transmission using 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) over a 520km G.652 fiber link with more than 2dB margin.
Marvell, Lumentum and Coherent were able to develop modules, each with their own optics and module technology that enabled the reach to be extended from the standard 120km up to 500km leveraging the capabilities of the Orion DSP while maintaining compliance with the OIF 800G ZR specification.
"At more than 100% CAGR since 2022, the deployment growth of pluggable coherent modules exceeds that of any other coherent technology in history," said Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst at Cignal AI. "Their performance increasingly rivals traditional embedded optics, and the interoperable test results with 800 Gbps ZR/ZR+ modules for long-distance DCI delivered by Marvell, Lumentum, and Coherent demonstrate that the application space for pluggables is expanding well beyond short-reach data centre interconnect."
"Long-distance optical connectivity used to be the exclusive domain of embedded optical solutions but that's no longer the case," said Stephen Adolph, Vice President of Marketing at Marvell. "Interoperable ZR/ZR+ modules like the Marvell COLORZ 800 are now available from multiple vendors to address the longer data centre interconnect distances of cloud operators as they scale their infrastructure for the AI era."
"Pluggability everywhere is a critical inflection point in the transmission space," added Pranay Aiya, Vice President, Product Line Management for Transmission Solutions at Coherent. "Each generation of pluggable coherent modules further expands network coverage, enabling 800G services beyond data centre interconnects to metro and regional applications.”
