Mellanox announces first 200Gb/s silicon photonics devices, doubling performance in QSFP form factor

Issued by icomm for Exclusive Networks Africa
Johannesburg, 17 May 2016

Mellanox Technologies, a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end intelligent interconnect solutions for data centre servers and storage systems, recently demonstrated its 50Gb/s silicon photonics optical modulators and detectors at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference in the US.

The company's distribution partner, Networks Unlimited, distributes Mellanox products in 23 African countries.

The demonstrated devices are the key component in 200Gb/s and 400Gb/s LinkX cables and transceivers, and this demonstration was an important milestone towards providing end-to-end solutions for HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect infrastructure.

"Silicon photonics is the enabling technology for 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet networks," said Amir Prescher, executive vice-president of business development and interconnect products at Mellanox. "The QSFP56 doubles the front panel density for next-generation switches; enables 200G copper DACs and 50G breakout cables for adapters and inside-the-rack applications; and silicon photonics transceivers supports all data center reaches to 2km."

Mellanox plans to offer 50Gb/s and 200Gb/s Direct Attach Copper cables (DACs); copper splitter cables (QSFP56 to 4x SFP56); silicon photonics based AOCs for up to 200m reach; and silicon photonics transceivers for a reach up to 2km. Mellanox 200Gb/s cables and transceivers will seamlessly support previous generations of 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s networks.

"Moving to 100G network inside the data centre is becoming more and more of a reality in our region, and we can support this growth," adds Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited.

Mellanox's extensive LinkX interconnect product family includes 10Gb/s, 40Gb/s, 25Gb/s, 50Gb/s and 100Gb/s copper cables, active optical cables and transceivers for both single mode fibre and multi-mode fibre applications. The newest LinkX additions, introduced at OFC 2016, are 25Gb/s transceivers and Active Optical cables, and use the SFP28 form factor.

Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ: MLNX) is a leading supplier of end-to-end Ethernet and InfiniBand intelligent interconnect solutions and services for servers, storage, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Mellanox intelligent interconnect solutions increase data centre efficiency by providing the highest throughput and lowest latency, delivering data faster to applications and unlocking system performance. Mellanox offers a choice of high performance solutions: network and multicore processors, network adapters, switches, cables, software and silicon, that accelerate application run-time and maximises business results for a wide range of markets, including high performance computing, enterprise data centres, Web 2.0, cloud, storage, network security, telecoms and financial services. More information is available at www.mellanox.com.

Networks Unlimited

Networks Unlimited is a value-added distributor, offering the best and latest solutions within the converged technology, data centre, networking, and security landscapes. The company distributes best-of-breed products, including Arbor Networks, Aruba Networks, Fortinet, F5, Mellanox, ProLabs, Riverbed, RSA, SimpliVity and Tintri. The product portfolio provides solutions from the edge to the data centre, and addresses key areas such as cloud networking and integration, WAN optimisation, application performance management, application delivery networking, WiFi, mobile and networking security, load balancing, data-centre-in-a-box, and storage for virtual machines.

Since its formation in 1994, Networks Unlimited has continually adapted to today's progressively competitive and evolving marketplace, and has reaped the benefits by being a leading value-added distributor (VAD) within the sub-Saharan Africa market.

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