II-VI completes the tape-out of its Steelerton™ DSP, the first in the industry to enable 100 Gbps coherent transmission in a pluggable QSFP28 form factor

II‐VI Incorporated (Nasdaq: IIVI), a leader in optical transceivers, today announced that it completed the tape-out of its Steelerton™ digital signal processor (DSP) for 100 Gbps coherent transmission in optical access and aggregation networks.  

The growth of 5G wireless and high-speed broadband services is driving the explosive demand for coherent transceiver technology optimized for optical access networks. While service providers currently deploy coherent transceivers in core networks and datacenter interconnects, they are seeking new designs that meet their high volume, low cost, low power dissipation, and small size requirements for access networks. II-VI’s Steelerton DSP, miniaturized and with ultralow power dissipation, typically of 2 W, was designed specifically to enable 100 Gbps digital coherent optics (DCO) in a pluggable QSFP28 format, one of the most widely deployed 100 Gbps transceiver form factors in access networks.

“The Steelerton DSP promises to bring 100 Gbps QSFP28-DCO transceivers into the mainstream in access networks,” said Matthias Berger, Vice President, Coherent Technology, II-VI Incorporated. “It’s a breakthrough solution that enables wide-scale deployment of full C-band tunable coherent transceivers into QSFP28 ports, of which there are tens of millions in service. The Steelerton DSP is less than one-fifth the size and consumes less than half the power of any other 100 Gbps coherent DSP commercially available.”

II-VI will demonstrate its coherent transceiver technology June 21-23 in Barcelona in conjunction with Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) & DCI World.