Acacia Communications Announces the Industry's First Coherent 100G CFP Module Designed for Metro Networks

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Sep 24, 2013) - Acacia Communications, the leader in delivering intelligent transceivers for ultra-high speed fiber optic transmission to the telecommunications infrastructure industry, today at ECOC 2013 announced the industry's first coherent 100G CFP module. Acacia's newest product is designed specifically for metro networks and reduces the size, power consumption and cost and for the first time provides carriers and content providers a 100G metro solution that is more cost effective than 10G.

"Our new solution enables cost-sensitive metro network operators to move to 100G and achieve significant performance and capacity benefits," said Acacia Communications President and CEO Raj Shanmugaraj. "Cost, power and size are critical and to date the service providers have been forced to stay with 10G or 40G levels of performance. Our new 100G coherent CFP module leverages our co-development of ASIC and module hardware/software and coupled with efficient photonic integration offers carriers optimal flexibility. Coherent CFP is a technology game changer and our AC-100 CFP is the first to market."

"CFP is a standardized common interface in transport, packet optical and router equipment. Enabling single wavelength coherent 100G PM-QPSK in a CFP form factor provides a compelling metro network solution. Moving from 10G to 100G requires a module that can achieve multi-vendor interoperability across gear like routers, switches, and transmission equipment, and also be flexible to support driving down the costs and power demands," said Daryl Inniss, VP and Practice Leader of Components at Ovum.

Acacia's innovative new coherent AC-100 CFP transceiver takes full advantage of the two major tectonic technology shifts underway in high speed optical communications, namely powerful digital signal processing implemented in small geometry CMOS and extensive photonic integration. "By leveraging these two disruptive technologies in our 100G coherent CFP, we have been able to maintain all the performance advantages of our coherent long-haul module while reducing cost, size and power consumption dramatically. These capabilities provide carriers and content providers with a compelling 100G solution to address capacity needs in their metro networks," said Acacia's Co-founder and Director of HW/SW, Mehrdad Givehchi.

Key features of the new pluggable AC-100 CFP include:

• Framing and OTN functionality, making it possible to turn client CFP slots into LH interfaces
• A single common pluggable interface that can be used across different service platforms, providing optimal flexibility from a planning and sparring perspective -- very similar to the XFP at 10G
• Support for the important ZR application (80km unamplified links) that is not supported today by any commercial 100G transceiver
• Superior tolerance to fiber impairments and ROADM filtering

Acacia's coherent 100G CFP modules will be sampling the end of 2013. The company recently announced a $20 million expansion round of funding and that it had significantly expanded its worldwide headquarters in Maynard, MA and facilities in Hazlet, NJ.

About Acacia Communications:

Acacia Communications Inc. was founded by Mehrdad Givehchi, Benny Mikkelsen and Christian Rasmussen and provides advanced solutions to the optical transport and network infrastructure equipment market for coherent 100G, 200G, 400G and beyond transceivers. Working in close collaboration with customers and suppliers, Acacia designs, manufactures and sells leading-edge optical transponder technology that enables customers to reduce overall costs while increasing performance and reducing time to market. Acacia is headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, USA and has an office in Hazlet, New Jersey. For more information about Acacia, visit www.acacia-inc.com