Jan 8 2008
At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, Luxtera Inc. today announced its demonstration of the world’s first DisplayPort optical interconnect based on its breakthrough Silicon Photonics technology. As part of the Video Electronics Standards Association’s (VESA) DisplayPort™ TechZone, Luxtera is showcasing its long reach optical solution for digital home and digital signage applications.
By utilizing Luxtera’s technology, customers will be able to deploy high resolution displays, such as 4K2K, at distances from 2 meters to 4 kilometers from video source and cost points more attractive than today’s alternative copper and fiber extension box solutions.
The bandwidth between a graphics card and a monitor is exceeding 10 Gbps driven by increasing monitor resolutions, faster refresh rates and more color depth. The DisplayPort standard allows for up to 10.8 Gbps of video data. However, these fast data rates are putting strain of traditional copper interconnect which limit the length of copper cable between the monitor and a display to 2 meters at high speed, as defined by the standard. At the same time, Digital Signage and Digital Home applications require long reach connectivity because the source content may be located tens of meters or even kilometers from displays. Traditional copper solutions cannot support these reaches while existing optical interconnect and extension box solutions are cost prohibitive.
By combining optical and electronic elements on a single silicon CMOS chip, Luxtera is the first company to break cost barriers of traditional optics and economically deliver high performance optical interconnect to mainstream markets. Luxtera is already delivering its breakthrough solutions to enterprise communication applications and now it is demonstrating benefits of its technology to consumer markets.
“AMD is pleased to provide our next generation graphics technology with DisplayPort support to Luxtera for their optical interconnect demonstration, and we look forward to their continued leadership in optics within VESA’s DisplayPort organization,” said Matt Skynner, vice president, AMD Graphics Products Group. “DisplayPort opens up more opportunities for our graphics processors especially for Digital Home and Digital Signage applications by allowing for longer reach connectivity while being economically efficient.”
“Luxtera has led the VESA DisplayPort task force in development of DisplayPort specification requirements that allow for alternative technologies such as optics to be supported and economically implemented,” said Alan Kobayashi, Vice President, Display and Monitor Marketing, Genesis Microchip. “We are pleased to support Luxtera as they bring the first DisplayPort optical solution to market.”
“The rapidly growing Digital Signage and Digital Home markets demand larger, higher resolution displays driving demand for economical long reach and high performance interconnect,” said Marek Tlalka, VP of marketing for Luxtera. “By delivering a single chip solution fabricated in a high volume, mainstream fabrication processes, our silicon CMOS Photonics technology is the only answer that can simultaneously solve both the performance and cost problems faced by customers. We have already delivered products based on our technology to enterprise communications markets and we are excited to demonstrate the same benefits to consumer market applications.”
Consumer Electronics Show is January 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Luxtera’s DisplayPort Optical Interconnect demonstration will take place at Luxtera’s booth #71857 located at VESA DisplayPort TechZone in Sands-Venetian Exposition Center.