January of this year saw Jerry Rawls step down as chief executive of Finisar, a company he had grown from obscurity to worldwide success. He talks to Rebecca Pool about building his empire, the firm’s new CEO and a future that could include Oclaro*
What prompted you and Frank Levinson to launch Finisar in the late 1980s?
Finisar has introduced a 100G serial FR transceiver in the popular QSFP28 form factor for inter-data centre, transport and router applications with 2km reaches.
Previewing at the recent OFC conference and exhibition in San Diego, the module leverages a standard 4x25G electrical interface, so that it plugs into standard QSFP28 slots, but employs just one serial 100G PAM4 optical channel. Once deployed in sufficient volume, it is expected to replace existing 100G QSFP28 CWDM4 modules. The company also plans to introduce a 500m DR version of this module.
Finisar launched a new product family at this year’s OFC conference in San Diego, complementing its line of coherent components and Analog Coherent Optics (ACO) transceivers. Called the Integrated Tunable Transmitter and Receiver Assembly (ITTRA), the new product family is heralded as the industry's smallest fully integrated coherent optics assembly.
Finisar co-founder Jerry Rawls has officially stepped down and is succeeded as chief executive officer and company director by Michael Hurlston, in a move effective immediately. Robert Stephens has been appointed to replace Rawls as chairman of the board.
Finisar has been awarded $390 million from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which will enable the components manufacturer to dramatically increase its R&D spending and high-volume production of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).
Apple uses VCSELs in its new iPhone X to scan your face for its Face ID facial recognition system, and for proximity sensing in its AirPod earbuds. The 3D laser scanning system uses time-of-flight measurements to calculate the distance from the source to the target and back to the sensor.
Finisar announced that it is in full production of its 100G shortwave wavelength division multiplexing (SWDM) optical transceiver, which is compliant with the 100G SWDM4 specification defined by the SWDM multi-source agreement (MSA).
The pluggable QSFP28 transceiver is the first mass-produced module capable of transmitting 100Gb/s over a pair of multimode fibres, thus enabling users to upgrade their systems from 10 Gigabit Ethernet to 100 Gigabit Ethernet without changing their data centre cabling.
Finisar has introduced Flextune, a new hardware configurable feature for wavelength-tunable optical transceivers. The Flextune feature significantly simplifies deployment of DWDM transceivers in Remote PHY access networks constructed by cable multiple system operators (MSOs).
Optical components developer Finisar has announced that chairman and chief executive officer Jerry Rawls has informed the board of directors that he intends to retire as CEO of the company by the end of calendar year 2018.
The board of directors will conduct a search to identify Mr. Rawls' successor and will consider internal and external candidates for the job.
Finisar says its BPDV4121100GHz balanced detector operates at frequencies in excess of 100GHz to enable coherent signal detection and characterisation at rates up to 160Gbaud, making it the fastest detector on the market. This component will enable the next generation of optical test and measurement equipment, to help vendors develop even higher baud rate optical transmission systems, the company explains.
Finisar has introduced a new line of programmable optical processors aimed at applications in advanced communications systems, and has also added new functions to its WaveAnalyzer 1500S optical spectrum analyser software.
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January of this year saw Jerry Rawls step down as chief executive of Finisar, a company he had grown from obscurity to worldwide success. He talks to Rebecca Pool about building his empire, the firm’s new CEO and a future that could include Oclaro*