Tokyo, Feb 3, 2014 - (JCN Newswire - MySolutionInfo) - Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. today announced that they have collaborated to develop a new multi-fiber optical connector that enjoins and aligns multiple optical fibers for optical interconnects(1).

The conventional method of connecting optical fibers requires high-precision polishing that aligns the tips of the fibers, making the cost of this process considerable. Fujitsu Laboratories and Furukawa Electric have developed a connector that can accommodate different lengths of optical fiber with a spring mechanism that obviates the need for this polishing process, slashing by more than half the cost required to connect optical fibers.

This new jointly developed connector achieves performance on par with conventional connectors while simplifying the task of installing high-capacity optical interconnects in a server. It is anticipated that this technology will increase data transmission speed between boards, increasing overall server performance.

This technology is being presented in detail at SPIE Photonics West 2014, from February 1, 2014, in San Francisco.

Background

In recent years, the volume of data transmission inside servers has grown in line with greater server processing performance. Today, high-speed data speeds of 25Gbps or greater are required for transmissions between the CPUs, and CPUs and memory. Conventional electrical wiring suffers signal degradation due to attenuation at high speeds, making high-speed transmission between server boards difficult even over short distances. Optical fiber, which suffers little signal degradation, has therefore led to much attention being focused on optical interconnects.

Using optical interconnects for communications between server boards requires numerous multi-fiber connectors, each of which connects and aligns multiple optical fibers to allow for parallel signal transfers. The large volume required, however, leads to the problem of high costs when deploying optical interconnects inside servers.

Issues

With existing multi-fiber connectors, the fibers need to be fixed into the connector and then have their fiber-end faces precisely polished so that their tips align flat for low-loss connections. However, as the polishing process needs to be performed for each connector, the overall cost is high. The problem has been the lack of having a simple optical connector that offers the benefits of low signal loss without requiring costly polishing.

Contact:

Fujitsu Limited
Public and Investor Relations
www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/
+81-3-3215-5259

Technical Contacts:

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.
Devices & Materials Laboratories
Photonic Devices Lab.
E-mail: opt-cn@ml.labs.fujitsu.com