Row-level airflow management refers to improving cold aisle and hot aisle separation. It’s typically done once you’ve made improvements at the rack level (e.g. blanking panels) and raised floor level (e.g. brush grommets). When we talk to data center operators about improving airflow efficiency at the row, they’ll jump ahead to containment a little too quickly. The fact is, there are several areas in the row that can be addressed without engaging in a full-blown containment initiative.
Right now, optical technologies comfortably support lane speeds of 50 Gb/s for multimode fiber with 100 Gb/s lanes soon to follow. In their search for bigger, faster pipes, network operators are focusing on two areas: improved optics and the increasing use of multiplexing. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. Many of the most attractive technologies involve both multiplexing and improved optics.
A study published in the journal Science last week, notes that while global data-center energy consumption has risen over the past decade, a predicted explosion in power consumption by data centers has not manifested thanks to advances in power efficiency and, ironically enough, the move to the cloud. Data centers accounted for about 205 terawatt-hours of electricity usage in 2018, roughly 1% of all electricity consumption worldwide. This represents a 6% increase in total power consumption since 2010, while global data center compute instances rose by 550% over that same time period.
The QSFP-DD multi-source agreement recognizes three duplex optical connectors: the CS, SN, and MDC. All three are duplex connectors that are characterized as very small form factor (VSFF).
The Open Eye Consortium has released its 53 Gbps single-mode specification which defines the requirements for analog PAM-4 solutions for 50G SFP, 100G DSFP, 200G QSFP, and 400G QSFP-DD and OSFP single-mode modules. The MSA aims to accelerate the adoption of PAM-4 optical interconnects scaling to 50Gbps, 100Gbps, 200Gbps, and 400Gbps by expanding upon existing standards to enable optical module implementations using less complex, lower cost, lower power, and optimized analog clock and data recovery (CDR) based architectures in addition to existing digital signal processing (DSP) architectures. A whitepaper is available to view and download.
Hengtong Rockley has released a 400G QSFP-DD DR4 optical module based on silicon photonics technology geared for cloud data center networks. The new 400G QSFP-DD module is the company’s first 400G silicon photonics optical module product and is intended for use in next generation cloud-scale data center networks for low-cost, low-power consumption optical connections between switches. The deployment of such 400G transceivers will enable data center networks to deliver a 4x increase in network speed compared to existing deployments using 100G.
The exhibit floor at OFC 2020 in San Diego is open and attendance is reported as light. More than 180 exhibitors pulled out of the conference. To provide access to the sessions, show organizers have made the technical sessions available via video conferencing.
To help network operators stay ahead of bandwidth needs driven by 5G, AI and hyperscale data centers, Corning has announced a series of smaller, denser additions to its portfolio of long-haul fiber and cable innovations, including the world’s first smaller-form-factor submarine and terrestrial long-haul fibers in a 200-micron diameter.
Static is an invisible hazard to fiber-optic networks. Electrostatic charges draw and hold unwanted dust particles onto fiber network connector endfaces just like a magnet. Although this dust contamination is merely microns in size and only visible when magnified with an inspection scope, it can still cause serious performance problems for a network. Dust in a signal’s path may change or obstruct the light’s index of refraction, or the route of the signal, through the fiber. This causes insertion loss that weakens the signal and slows down the network speed. And if the refraction angle is altered enough, the network signal may be lost altogether.
Singlemode fiber-optic cabling systems, once found almost exclusively in service providers’ long-haul networks or in expansive campuses, are now commonly being used in data center and enterprise networks. How deep has singlemode gotten into these networks, and how much deeper are they likely to go? That’s the topic of this month’s In-Depth discussion.In the data center and the enterprise, long-wavelength transmission supported by singlemode fiber-optic cabling systems serve today’s networking needs and hold promise for tomorrow.
