Industry Consortium Forms to Drive New Standard for Optical Laser Sources

The CW-WDM MSA (Continuous-Wave Wavelength Division Multiplexing Multi-Source Agreement) Group announced its formation as an industry consortium dedicated to defining and promoting specifications for multiwavelength advanced integrated optics.

In contrast to other optical communication standards groups, the CW-WDM MSA is solely focused on specifying the laser source, rather than the full communications link, and is not targeted at any specific applications. This approach, the group said, allows developers to fully optimize optics to their customers’ requirements without interoperability constraints, while simultaneously creating a large business opportunity for laser source suppliers.

“Promoter members” of the CW-WDM MSA are Arista Networks, Ayar Labs, CST Global, imec, Intel, Lumentum, Luminous Computing, MACOM, Quintessent, Sumitomo Electric, and II-VI.

In addition, several “observer members” have signed on to be briefed on the development of the standard to enable early technology development based on the new specifications. Observer members are AMF, Axalume, Broadcom, Coherent Solutions, Furukawa Electric, GlobalFoundries, Keysight Technologies, NeoPhotonics, NVIDIA, Samtec, Scintil Photonics, and Tektronix.

For more information about the CW-WDM MSA, visit cw-wdm.org.