Press Releases :: 2009

FREMONT, CA – March 23, 2009 – Santur Corporation today announces its EPIC^TM Enhanced Photonic Integration Circuit launching a new era in optical connectivity based on its successful laser array Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) platform . As the world’s leading supplier of Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) tunable solutions, this new product family represents an extension of its widely adopted parallel array architecture yielding a breakthrough approach to 100Gb/s optical transceivers. Santur’s innovative approach to coupling its parallel laser array with a Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) creates an unprecedented level of photonic integration for client optical connectivity and delivers 100 Gb/s up to 10Km on a Single Mode Fiber.

Unlike 10x10Gb/s technologies based on ribbons of Multi-Mode Fiber, the Santur solution operates on a single conventional Single Mode Fiber (SMF) enabling extended reach. Compared with other 100Gb/s implementations for single mode fiber optical links, this approach does not require 25Gb/s electronics such as gearbox ICs to convert 10Gb/s data streams to intermediate 25Gb/s lanes.

According to Santur CEO Paul Meissner, “The growth and popularity of digital media has created a whole new set of challenges and opportunities for communication systems tasked to deliver large files at high bit rates from content libraries. The result? Next generation systems must deliver far more bandwidth with much lower cost per bit than traditional approaches.”

Traditional solutions to this optical connectivity challenge rely on discrete components. For example, solutions that deliver more than 10Gb/s, require 4 times increase in component count to deliver 4 times bandwidth increase. Santur offers EPIC^TM as a means to transform the transceiver market by addressing the simultaneous scaling factors of bandwidth and cost.

Milind Gokhale, Vice President of Technology and Development at Santur stated that “the need for higher bandwidth on a single fiber is best addressed by innovative integration at the chip and package level compared with discrete implementations. Our 100Gb/s architecture for transmission over Single Mode Fiber is based on high yielding 10x10Gb/s laser arrays, PLC integration, and robust10Gb/s driver and receiver electronics enabling the delivery of 10 times increase in bandwidth at a significantly lower cost per bit.”

Early developers of 100Gb/s systems have relied on Santur’s platform to develop leading edge 100Gb/s systems. In September, 2008, the first successful 100Gb/s transmission over 10Km SMF was demonstrated at ECOC 2008 in Brussels, Belgium. This year at the OFC/NFOEC 2009 in San Diego, CA, Santur along with its partners demonstrates the EPIC^TM platform running over 40Km SMF. In addition, Santur will showcase EPIC^TM based pluggable transceivers delivering 100Gb/s and 40Gb/s over 10Km SMF.

Availability
The first transceiver product based on EPIC^TM will ship in the spring of 2009 to early access partners with production units scheduled for the end of this year.

About Santur Corporation
Headquartered in Fremont, California, Santur Corporation is the world’s leading vertically integrated manufacturer of high-performance tunable lasers for metro and long-haul WDM systems. For more information, visit www.santurcorp.com, call 1-(866)-TUNABLE, or e-mail marketing@santurcorp.com.

Contact:
Vibha Goel, Director of Marketing
Santur Corporation
Phone: (510) 933 4114
Fax: (510) 656-7563
E-mail: vgoel@santurcorp.com