Oclaro Unveils CFP and CFP2 100G Transceivers Featuring Industry-first Interoperability, Lower Power and Smaller Size

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR), a tier-one provider and innovator of optical communications and laser solutions, today announced a second-generation 100G CFP (Centum Gbit/s form-factor pluggable) transceiver and first-generation CFP2 100G transceiver for 10km transmission over standard single-mode fiber.  These new transceivers deliver significant reductions in power consumption and size and represent the industry's first interoperable CFP and CFP2 solutions available on the market. In addition, the new transceivers have been specifically designed to meet the needs of higher-speed 100G networks for the core, metro, access, enterprise and datacenter where higher densities, lower power consumption and smaller size are key operator requirements for these next-generation network deployments.  Oclaro will be demonstrating these new transceivers during the ECOC Exhibition (in Oclaro stand #444) from September 17-19 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Leveraging Oclaro's design, manufacturing and vertical integration strengths, the second-generation CFP delivers a 30-percent reduction in power consumption versus existing Oclaro CFP solutions and provides interoperability with Oclaro's earlier CFP products.  Likewise, the new CFP2 (which is a new form factor recently specified by the CFP MSA) delivers a 50-percent reduction in size over all existing CFP solutions on the market and is the industry-first CFP2 solution to be interoperable with a first-generation CFP product. This interoperability is a major competitive advantage for Oclaro customers as it will allow them to quickly and cost-effectively transition to the smaller and lower power designs without having to sacrifice their original investments in earlier CFP solutions.

"Today's announcement is another milestone in the advancement of 100G networks, where Oclaro continues to lead the market with the broadest set of components, modules and subsystems that offer the price, performance and power consumption that customers need for high-volume 100G deployment," said Tadayuki Kanno, Chief Operating Officer, Oclaro Japan Inc., GM, Modules & Devices Business Unit, Oclaro, Inc.  "Our customers can now deploy lower-cost CFP/CFP2 solutions that pack backward-compatible interface and functionality onto lower-power consumption and smaller form factors.  These solutions also offer the interoperability and standards-compliancy that is required from the major telecom and datacom operators."

Meeting the Needs of the Growing 100G Market

The explosive growth of the 100G optical transceiver market, which analyst firm Infonetics Research expects revenue to grow by 10x from 2010 to 2016, is being driven a shift to coherent networking and datacenter switching growth. However, while 100G networks deliver the bandwidth increases that consumers are demanding, they have posed challenges for customers and telecom operators who need to maintain competitive price/performance, low power consumption, interoperability with earlier solutions and compatibility with the newest standards in the industry.  With its new CFP and CFP2 transceivers, Oclaro has leveraged its broad expertise in the core optical market with its history of delivering leading CFP products to achieve lower power and smaller size without sacrificing high-quality performance or interoperability.

• The second-generation CFP is fully compliant with IEEE 100G Ethernet 802.3ba 100GBASE-LR4  and ITU-T G.959.1 4I1-9D1F standards and benefits from a CMOS gearbox IC that reduces power consumption and lowers cost relative to first-generation CFP designs.   While first generation CFP delivered 24W, the second-generation CFP delivers 16W. This second-generation CFP utilizes more than 2 years of manufacturing experience of the first-generation CFP and its in-house TOSA and ROSA technologies guarantee proven high-quality and backward compatibility.
• The new CFP2 transceiver is Oclaro's first CFP2 design and is roughly 50% the size of all other CFP solutions on the market, which increases system front panel port density from 4 ports to 8 ports.  The smaller size of the CFP2 transceiver is achieved by reducing the number of electrical lanes from 10 to 4 by applying a 25Gbps electrical interface per channel instead of 10Gbps and hence removing the GearBox from the module. In order to achieve the smaller size, more integrated in-house optical components are used based on Oclaro's leading-edge optical device technologies.  In addition, the CFP2 transceiver can optically interoperate with first and second-generation CFP transceivers, which allows customers to quickly and cost-effectively transition to CFP2 designs as market requirements evolve. The CFP2 is also fully-compliant with the MSA, IEEE and ITU-T specifications.

Product Availability

The second generation CFP and CFP2 transceivers are sampling today and are expected to be in volume production in early 2013.

About Oclaro

Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) is one of the largest providers of lasers and optical components, modules and subsystems for the optical communications, industrial, and consumer laser markets.  The company is a global leader dedicated to photonics innovation, with cutting-edge research and development (R&D) and chip fabrication facilities in the U.S., U.K., Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Korea and Japan. It has in-house and contract manufacturing sites in China, Malaysia and Thailand, with design, sales and service organizations in most of the major regions around the world. For more information, visit http://www.oclaro.com.

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. Oclaro, the Oclaro logo, and certain other Oclaro trademarks and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Oclaro, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Information in this release is subject to change without notice.

SOURCE Oclaro, Inc.