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Marvell, Lumentum and Coherent have demonstrated interoperability of 800G ZR/ZR+ optical modules over transmission links up to 500km.
This achievement shows that multivendor standards-based pluggable modules can interoperate while achieving the performance required for data centre interconnects between regional cloud data centers spanning distances up to 500km – claimed to be an industry first for 800G.
Cloud operators are scaling their infrastructure for AI services by building more regional data centers, which require optimized power and cost to interconnect. Pluggable coherent modules and DSPs have increased bandwidth by 8X while reducing power consumption per bit by 30% with each new generation. The emergence of a standards-based, multi-vendor ecosystem has further accelerated innovation and minimized the risk of vendor lock-in.
The 800G ZR/ZR+ optical modules used in the demonstration are all based 
on the Marvell® Orion 800G coherent optical DSP. Modules from the three companies were used to showcase interoperable metro-distance transmission using 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) over a 520km G.652 fiber link with more than 2dB margin.
Marvell, Lumentum and Coherent were able to develop modules, each with their own optics and module technology that enabled the reach to be extended from the standard 120km up to 500km leveraging the capabilities of the Orion DSP while maintaining compliance with the OIF 800G ZR specification.
“At more than 100% CAGR since 2022, the deployment growth of pluggable coherent modules exceeds that of any other coherent technology in history,” said Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst at Cignal AI. “Their performance increasingly rivals traditional embedded optics, and the interoperable test results with 800 Gbps ZR/ZR+ modules for long-distance DCI delivered by Marvell, Lumentum, and Coherent demonstrate that the application space for pluggables is expanding well beyond short-reach data center interconnect
