Hardware Test Engineer

FS pairs 1.6T Scale-Out optics with 500 km coherent modules and a handheld toolkit for AI fabrics. by Harold Fritts on September 14, 2026 FS has organized its AI optics into a two-part portfolio: Scale-Out transceivers at 400G, 800G, and 1.6T for the links inside a GPU cluster, and Scale-Across coherent modules at 400G and 800G for stitching clusters together across sites at distances up to 500 km. The Scale-Out side covers Ethernet, RoCE, and InfiniBand fabrics between GPU servers, NICs, switches, and racks; the Scale-Across side ships in OSFP and QSFP-DD for data center interconnect. Alongside both, FS is positioning the BOX 5 Ultra, a handheld toolkit for configuring, validating, and monitoring transceivers from 100M to 1.6T without a switch in the loop. The announcement is a packaging of parts FS has released one at a time since December, so the useful view is how they line up. 1.6T at the top of the Scale-Out stack. The 1.6T parts are the OSFP-DR8-1.6T and OSFP-2FR4-1.6T, twin-port OSFP modules with a closed finned top that FS introduced for InfiniBand XDR networks. Both take 8x 200G PAM4 on the electrical side and run a Broadcom 3nm DSP. The DR8 uses silicon photonics with a CW laser, drives dual 4x 200G optical lanes at 1310nm over dual MTP/MPO-12 connectors, reaches 500 meters, and tops out at 25W; the 2FR4 uses EML transmitters and CWDM4 wavelengths over dual duplex LC, reaches 2 km, and draws up to 26W. FS says the modules are 100% verified on NVIDIA Quantum-X800 switches and lists NVIDIA part numbers (MMS4A00 and MMS4A50-XM) they're built to match, with the DR8 aimed at 1.6T switch-to-switch links and 1.6T-to-two-800G breakouts into DGX B300 systems. That puts FS in the same 200G-per-lane generation the hyperscalers are buying into, whether through Qualcomm's 1.6T interconnect deal with Amazon or the startup optics Lumilens is already shipping, at the compatible-module end of the market where FS competes on price and availability. The form factor detail matters more at 1.6T than it did at 400G. FS's diagram shows the three OSFP tops it sells: the closed-finned top and the open-finned top both stand about 13mm and are meant for air-cooled switch cages (the closed version also works in liquid-cooled systems), while the flat top at roughly 9.5mm is for NICs with cage-riding heatsinks or liquid-cooled gear. The release says the 400G-to-1.6T lineup spans multiple form factors to match specific accelerator platforms, and that's the choice it's referring to: the same optics in the shape a given switch or NIC can cool. 800G coherent for Scale-Across, and the muxponder behind it. The Scale-Across modules are the 800G ZR/ZR+ coherent optics FS launched in July, in OSFP and QSFP-DD, built on a Marvell 5nm DSP. FS rates them for 120 km and 500 km over single-mode fiber depending on the line, supports C-band and L-band operation to get more out of a fiber pair, and lists compliance with the OSFP and QSFP-DD MSAs plus 800ZR, OpenZR+, and OIF specifications, with Open FEC and CMIS/C-CMIS management. The 500 km figure in this week's announcement is that July spec, restated with the caveat that reach depends on network configuration and optical line conditions. For sites that aggregate client traffic before it reaches the line side, FS added the D7070 Series muxponder in August: a 1U box that takes 100GbE and 400GbE client services on QSFP28 and QSFP112 and puts them onto four 800G coherent wavelengths through CFP2-DCO line pluggables, for 3.2 Tb/s per platform, with WebGUI and CLI management for third-party NMS integration. "As AI and cloud workloads accelerate inter-site traffic growth, customers need DCI networks that can scale with demand while maximizing existing infrastructure," said Bener Peng, product R&D manager at FS, when the D7070 launched. BOX 5 Ultra: provisioning optics without a switch. The FS BOX 5 Ultra is the operations piece. It's a portable transceiver toolkit that handles data rates from 100M to 1.6T across 15 form factors, OSFP, QSFP-DD, QSFP112, SFP-DD, and SFP among them, and FS says it works with modules from more than 200 brands. The functions are transceiver configuration, compatibility validation, module information reading, DDM monitoring, batch management, and wavelength tuning for tunable DWDM modules; the product page adds cloud batch coding, database access for easy config, and a 3,200mAh battery FS rates at up to 8 hours. The pitch is that a field tech can code, verify, and tune a tray of optics on a bench before any of them touch a production cage, which is the kind of work that otherwise eats switch ports and change windows. FS hasn't published module-level power or reach for every SKU in the 400G and 800G Scale-Out range in this announcement, and the 1.6T figures above come from the December launch of those specific parts. "The evolution from 800G to 1.6T is not only about higher speed but also about reshaping the optical interconnect architecture for AI," said Kyrie Zhang, senior product manager at FS, at that launch, and the September portfolio is the company drawing the map around it. Engage with StorageReview Harold Fritts. I have been in the tech industry since IBM created Selectric. My background, though, is writing. So I decided to get out of the pre-sales biz and return to my roots, doing a bit of writing but still being involved in technology.

Early Cerebras investor adit Singh joins Mayfield as infrastructure partner. At Mayfield, Singh will focus on semiconductor, cybersecurity, and physical AI investments. Adit Singh was a partner at Foundation Capital when he helped source and co-lead the first funding round into then-obscure chip startup Cerebras. By the time Cerebras held its blockbuster IPO in May, Foundation Capital held a roughly 7% stake, making it the third-largest shareholder in the company, which now trades at a valuation of nearly $50 billion. Singh now has a new VC firm to call home: On Thursday, he said he's now joined the 57-year-old Mayfield as an infrastructure partner. At Mayfield, Singh will invest in hardware, infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and physical AI. He says it was the firm's strength in semiconductors that drew him to the role. "If you look at Mayfield's semiconductor portfolio, it's probably the best in the market right now," Singh told TechCrunch, pointing to Mayfield's investments in Upscale AI, which was recently valued at $2 billion, and Lumilens, which just raised $700 million at a $5.5 billion valuation. "I'm a chip designer by training," Singh said. "My secret sauce is being able to look at any workload and see how it works from the application all the way down to the transistor." He credits his background in electrical engineering to helping him recognize the potential in Cerebras 10 years ago. However, Singh didn't stick around as an investor at Foundation. In 2017, he co-founded Neotribe Ventures, and after spending four years leading the firm, he joined early-stage firm Cota Capital. Singh says he decided to join Mayfield in large part because the size of seed infrastructure deals has ballooned in recent years. While smaller funds often get priced out of mega-seed deals, Mayfield's $3 billion in assets under management allows it to write seed checks of up to $20 million. Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha told TechCrunch that despite knowing Singh for 15 years and sitting on three startup boards together - including Upscale AI and unicorn AI startup Velaura AI - it still took some time to convince him to join the firm. "We have been talking for a long time, and this time stars aligned," Chaddha said.

Lumilens raises more than $700m for optical AI data-centre links. Lumilens has emerged from stealth with more than $700m in new funding, bringing its total raised to over $900m and valuing the company at $5.51bn. The startup is building optical interconnects designed to replace copper wiring in AI data centres, and says its first product is already shipping into a hyperscaler's live data centres under a deal it describes as worth billions. The company's case reflects a broader infrastructure shift: the limiting factor for AI is increasingly how many GPUs can be connected, not just how many can be bought. Large models run across hundreds of thousands of chips that must operate like one computer. A single 400,000-GPU site needs more than 2.4 million optical transceivers, while copper links inside racks struggle at AI speeds because an electrical signal survives about a metre and a half over copper. The round was co-led by Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech, Seligman Ventures and Spark Capital, with Qualcomm Ventures and JPMorgan also participating. Lumilens enters a crowded field that includes Nvidia, Broadcom, startups and Chinese rivals such as Eoptolink. Citigroup expects AI infrastructure outlays to pass $2.8tn by 2029, but Lumilens still faces questions around its unnamed customer, unaudited deal value and whether its early deployment can become a durable lead. Originally reported by thenextweb.com Read the source