Cisco 100g CPAK transceiver availability ?

On March 2013, Cisco announced the launch of it’s proprietary 100G optical transceiver module called CPAK. Unless other pluggable optic form-factors like XFP, SFP+, QSFP, CFP, CFP2/4 with are industry standard (Multi-Source Agreement MSA), CPAK is totally Cisco proprietary.

What makes CPAK Different?

CPAK was the first transceiver using CMOS Photonics, also called silicon photonics. CMOS stands for Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor and it is a semiconductor technology controlling the flow of photons in place of electrons. CMOS/Silicon photonics is a technology where consonance between two industries gives some synergy, mainly leveraging on the huge investment already made in semiconductor manufacturing. What does this give to networking – mainly two main aspects where CPAK has an advantage – first footprint, at its launch date, it had the smallest 100G footprint, providing higher port density and energy economy – according to Cisco marketing material from 4W to 7.5W per module.

What about Competition?

CPAK was launched in days when CFP2 was a bit late in the market, but now, for 100G application equipment vendors have a rich selection of interface modules, including also CFP4 and QSFP28, with both having a smaller footprint and smaller energy consumption, in such a way eliminating the unique selling points of the CPAK module. True – CFP4 and QSFP28 modules are produced using legacy VSCEL laser technology, but same time Photo electronic vendors as Finisar and others are showcasing their silicon photonic-based prototypes.

Juniper Networks recently introduced its 1TB line card on PTX with CFP2 pluggable optics. According to their opinion fact that such leading photo electronic producers as Sumitomo, Finisar, JDSU, and Avago have backed up the open source CFP2 standard is good evidence of its future potential.

Influence of CPAK?

Currently, I tend to think that CPAK as a form factor has more cons than pros. There are open source MSA-compatible 100G products like CFP/2/4 and QSFP28 with the same or better performance as CPAK. Main thing networkers should care about is open source versus proprietary aspect. Every time new pluggable optics form factors have been released, their initial prices were fortune. But as most of them are MSA Open-Source products, the industry quickly adopts and 3rd party optical solution vendors like ourselves, helping market to drive down this pricing and save huge costs for service providers, operators, and data centers, as optical pluggables are 15-30% of active equipment CAPEX. In case of proprietary CPAK technology, networkers risk being locked-in a situation, where they can get these modules only from one source, which is protecting it’s margins and not going down as fast industry is. I even think that such a situation can backfire on Cisco; in cases of close competition, they can simply lose to other, more open source platforms.

When will CPAK be available from 3rd-party vendors?

I honestly do not know. It depends mainly on two factors: first, if Cisco will release rights for other industry manufacturers to produce compatible CPAK transceivers, and second, when they do so, will the industry be willing to produce them, as we need to take into consideration the potential market size. Maybe MSA standard modules will out-compete CPAK? Anyhow, our customers will be ones of the first to know the update, if such industry development takes place!