Guide DR

Lasers reimagined for the scale-up era

Guide DR is the industry’s first liquid-cooled, high-density Light Engine designed specifically to address the needs of CPO scale-up networking. By integrating 64 high-power lasers into a liquid-cooled Laser-NIC module (“LNIC”) that fits into a tray’s NIC bay, Lightmatter eliminates the faceplate and reliability bottlenecks of externally pluggable “ELSFP” banks.

The Shift

BRINGING LASERS ONBOARD

Scaling CPO networking requires next-generation laser engines. Until now, optical I/O relied on arrays of discrete, pluggable lasers.

Guide DR laser modules resolve this bottleneck. By creating the industry’s densest, highest-output liquid-cooled laser module, Lightmatter eliminates the need for dedicated front-panel laser space.

Co-locating the laser module in the NIC Bay adjacent to the switch or XPU ASIC frees 100% of the front panel for networking and compute.

Performance

ENGINEERED TO SCALE

Guide DR LNIC modules deliver 4x higher optical power density than pluggable ELSFPs in a compact form factor that allows up to 8 LNIC in a single 1RU switch tray, powering up to 409.6 Tbps scale-up bandwidth.

01 – Consolidation

Optical Power Density

64 Lasers inside a single Guide DR LNIC power 256 scale-up lanes at 200G for a total bandwidth of 51.2 Tbps, and up to 8 LNICs fit into a single 1RU tray for an unprecedented 409.6 Tbps of scale-up bandwidth per CPO switch.

02 – Thermals

Liquid-Cooled Reliability

Guide DR LNIC has been designed with an integrated cold-plate that enables optimal “inside-out” cooling that keeps junction temperatures low and steady, unlike pluggable ELSFPs that are cooled from the outside and run hot on the inside. The inside-out cooling ensures that Guide DR LNIC laser modules have superior laser FIT compared to pluggable ELSFPs.

03 – Energy

Power Efficiency

Guide DR drives highly efficient NPO and CPO solutions that deliver lower pJ/bit than industry-leading CPO switches that rely on pluggable lasers in the faceplate.

04 – Compatibility

Optical Link Configurations

Guide DR supports all common O-band band configurations from 1311nm UniDi, 1311/1331nm BiDi to 8λ CWDM. Custom band plans up to 16λ DWDM are feasible.

Technical Specifications

Function

Continuous-wave (CW) laser

Wavelength count

64 Lasers

Output power

≥200 mW per fiber (12.8W total)

Wavelength ranges

Range A: 1311nm, Range B: 1331nm

Form factor

LNIC (WxDxH 60x120x20 mm)

Optical connector

4 SNMT-16 connectors

Control interface

CMIS 5.3 compliant over I2C/I3C