Acacia Communications Demonstrates AC1200 Coherent Module for DCI, Metro and Long-Haul Applications

MAYNARD, Mass., March 13, 2018 - Acacia Communications (NASDAQ:ACIA), a leading provider of high-speed coherent optical interconnect products, today announced it is demonstrating its AC1200 Coherent Module at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) taking place March 11 - March 15, 2018 at the San Diego Convention Center. Acacia’s AC1200 module has been designed to offer flexible features to address a wide range of network applications, advanced monitoring to enable intelligent networks and improved performance to reduce network operating costs.

Acacia’s AC1200 module supports transmission speeds of up to 1.2 Tbps in a footprint that is 40% less than the size of the 5” x 7” modules supporting transmission speeds of 400 Gbps today. It is based on Acacia’s Pico digital signal processor (DSP) ASIC, which is operating at 600 Gbps transmission speed, using 64QAM modulation for the demonstration, and utilizes two wavelengths that can be configured to support from 100 Gbps to 600 Gbps capacity each.

Acacia’s AC1200 module supports a suite of advanced three-dimensional (3D) shaping features that may be optimized to enable performance approaching theoretical limits on a wide range of network configurations. 3D shaping allows fine-tune adjustment of the modulation characteristics to provide network operators with the flexibility to customize the AC1200 transmission to their network requirements. The key features enabling 3D-shaping include:

• Shaping of the constellation points’ probability to optimize capacity using Acacia’s patented Fractional QAM modulation;
• Shaping of the constellation points’ location to optimize reach; and
• Shaping of the spectral width to match the available channel passband by adapting the baud rate.

Acacia’s AC1200 module also includes several features that enhance performance and give network operators the ability to take advantage of 3D-shaping:

• Flexible Client Interfaces – provides the flexibility to support a wide range of applications with 100GbE, 400GbE and FlexE interfaces to the host card.
• Enhanced Turbo Product Code SD-FEC – offers ultra-high net coding gain (NCG) and enables maximum reach, while maintaining low power dissipation.
• Internal Crossbar Switch – enables increased traffic flexibility, including transmission of three native 400GbE host signals on two wavelengths carrying 600Gbps each on the optical line; an important feature for edge DCI applications as cloud networks migrate to 400GbE.

“With our AC1200, we continue to demonstrate our ability to provide our customers with innovative solutions,” said Raj Shanmugaraj, President and Chief Executive Officer of Acacia Communications. “We believe that our AC1200 reduces the need for costly regeneration in long-haul networks, can adapt signal bandwidth to ROADM based metro networks and leverages 600 Gbps transmission to lower cost per bit in DCI networks.”

Acacia’s AC1200 module supports security encryption and a wide range of host interfaces designed to reduce or eliminate the need for costly external devices. The module features a software control interface that streamlines the integration and allows customers to more quickly take advantage of this highly flexible solution.

Acacia recently shipped its first customer samples and anticipates production to begin in the second half of 2018. The high capacity, enhanced performance, and rich feature set help to position Acacia’s AC1200 to enable carriers and content providers to meet their growing bandwidth demands.

Meet Acacia at OFC

If you are interested in meeting with Acacia to see the AC1200 demonstration during the conference, please contact marketing@acacia-inc.com.

About Acacia Communications

Acacia Communications develops, manufactures and sells high-speed coherent optical interconnect products that are designed to transform communications networks through improvements in performance, capacity and cost. By leveraging silicon technology to build optical interconnects, a process Acacia Communications refers to as the “siliconization of optical interconnect,” Acacia Communications is able to offer products at higher speeds and density with lower power consumption, that meet the needs of cloud and service providers and can be easily integrated in a cost-effective manner with existing network equipment. www.acacia-inc.com.