Re: Supporting Installed Fibre
The alternative to WWDM is probably a multi-level coding scheme (dibits or
quadbits per baud), which will reduce the baud rate to a managable
frequency. Transcendata is working on such a system. Others may be looking
at alternative coding schemes as well.
The disadvantage of this approach is that the IC's become very complex.
Reletive to WWDM, this is also the charm, as the IC's will be subject to
Moore's law, while the passive optics, plus 4X the number of devices, IC's
etc. of WWDM will probably not.
It seems unlikely to me that the H-P WWDM will conform to the pricing curve
your customers expect. I think waiting a little while before we make a
comittment might yield a scheme which better meets your customers
expectations.