GigOptix receives grant to customize modulators for government supercomputing apps

PALO ALTO, USA: GigOptix, a leading supplier of electronic and electro-optic semiconductor products for optical communications systems, has secured a grant for $200,000 in research and development funds to customize the company’s proprietary LX8400 40Gb/s Thin Film Polymer on Silicon (TFPS) Mach Zehnder (MZ) modulator for use in an ongoing Government Supercomputing program.

GigOptix is a leading provider of high speed analog and optical modulator solutions for the 10G, 40G and 100G telecom, datacom and datacenter markets. GigOptix’ proprietary TFPS MZ modulators have a very large bandwidth of up to 65GHz with low drive voltage that enable data transmission at very high rates with low power consumption.

Following the completion of a previous program where a GigOptix modulator was able to successfully transmit 40Gb/s data at the extremely low temperatures of 40° Kelvin or -233° Celsius, this latest grant will be used to further optimize the low temperature operation of the design to enable optical links in next generation peta-flop class supercomputers between processors running at ultra low temperatures and large scale memory running at room temperatures.

Dr. Raluca Dinu, VP and GM commented: "We are very excited to continue our cooperation on this program to further refine the low temperature operation of our TFPS modulators for supercomputer applications.

"We have identified specific design and process improvements from our previous tests to further improve 40G modulator performance at lower temperatures. Participation in this program demonstrates that GigOptix’ TFPS modulators can provide value not only to long-reach telecom applications, but also to short-reach supercomputer and datacenter applications."