First 800G DSP for linear receive optics in hyperscale and AI data centers
Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd has announced the availability of an industry first, the Dove 850 800G DSP IC, optimized for Linear Receive Optics (LRO), also known within the industry as Half-retimed Linear Optics (HALO).
In an LRO transceiver or Active Optical Cable (AOC), only the transmit path from the electrical input to the optical line side output includes a DSP for signal retiming and equalization. The Dove 850 is a unidirectional 8 x 112 Gb/s DSP purpose built for this LRO architecture.
As hyperscale data center AI deployments grow rapidly, high-speed optical transceivers and AOCs are critical to connecting thousands of GPUs. Given the huge volume of these optical components, improvements in energy efficiency are essential. The Dove 850 DSP IC addresses this need while enabling robust system performance, with the added benefit of reducing cost.
“Dove 850 reduces DSP power by up to 50% and optimizes cost while providing customers with an easy to use, robust, and interoperable option,” said Chris Collins, Vice President of Sales and Optical Product Marketing at Credo. “Our lead transceiver and hyperscale customers recognize the value of this solution and we have already shipped Dove 850 samples and evaluation boards to address the market need.”
Transceiver vendors can further optimize the module cost with Dove 850 by employing a variety of optics, including VCSELs, silicon photonics, EML or thin-film lithium niobate as dictated by the application requirements.
A Dove 850 based optical transceiver aims to address the inherent weakness of a Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) implementation by facilitating IEEE compliant optical transmit signaling and easing the deployment burden on system operators by eliminating manual, per port tuning. The result is lower bit error rates, enhanced sensitivity, reduced performance variation, and improved resilience to different switch ASICs, PCB traces, optical components, and environmental conditions.
“Over the last year, LPO has been a popular topic as the industry looks for ways to reduce power consumption in datacenters. However, customer enthusiasm has been curbed because of technical limitations such as interoperability, link accountability, and the ability to troubleshoot, which drove our forecast for LPO to less than 10% of the 800GbE market,” said Scott Wilkinson, Lead Analyst for Optical Components at Cignal AI. “Credo’s Dove 850 is a half-retimed solution that addresses these limitations, consumes less power than conventional optics, and provides a clear path to 224G for 1.6 Tb/s operation. This product should significantly expand the market for low power 800GbE well beyond that of LPO.”
The Dove 850 features independent PLL’s for each lane to support breakout applications, an OIF CEI-112G-MR compliant host interface, and numerous integrated diagnostic features to accelerate time to market and aid with system debug.
Dove 850 features and technical benefits include:
- IEEE 802.3 and CMIS 5.x compliant.
- 8 x 112 Gb/s PAM4 on both the electrical host receiver and optical line transmitter interfaces.
- Copper optimized DSP based electrical host side receivers deliver industry leading sensitivity and BER performance.
- Line side transmitters with multi-tap FIR filters, and non-linear correction facilitate the use of multi-mode or single-mode optics.
- Independent phase locked loops per channel supports flexible breakout configurations including 2 x 400G, 4 x 200G and 8 x 100G.
- A full suite of link diagnostic features simplifies lab bring up and production testing.
- Low-power dissipation reduces cooling requirements and provides for an energy efficient 800G optical solution.
Samples and evaluation boards of the Dove 850 are available immediately.