OSFP stands for Octal Small Form-factor Pluggable, which consists of 8 electrical lanes, running at 50Gb/s each, for a total of the bandwidth of 400Gb/s. This post will give an introduction of 400G OSFP transceiver types, the fiber connections, and some QAs about OSFP.
400G OSFP Transceiver Types
Below lists some current main 400G OSFP transceiver types: OSFP SR8, OSFP DR4, OSFP DR4+, OSFP FR4, OSFP 2*FR4, and OSFP LR4, which summarize OSFP transceiver according to the two transmission types (over multimode fiber and single-mode fiber) they support.
| Transmission Type | OSFP Product Description | Reach | Optical Connector | Wavelength | Optical Modulation | Protocol |
| Multimode fiber | 400G OSFP SR8 | up to 100m over parallel MMF | MTP-16/MPO-16 | 850nm | 50G PAM4 | IEEE P802.3cm;IEEE 802.3cd |
| Single-mode fiber | 400G OSFP DR4 | up to 500m over parallel SMF | MTP-12/MPO-12 | 1310nm | 100G PAM4 | IEEE 802.3bs |
| 4000G OSFP XDR4/DR4+ | up to 2km over parallel SMF | MTP-12/MPO-12 | 1310nm | 100G PAM4 | / | |
| 400G OSFP FR4 | up to 2km over duplex SMF | LC | CWDM4 wavelength | 100G PAM4 | 100Glambda MSA | |
| 400G OSFP 2FR4 | up to 2km over duplex SMF | CS | CWDM4 wavelength | 50G PAM4 | IEEE 802.3bs | |
| 400G OSFP LR4 | up to 10km over duplex SMF | LC | CWDM4 wavelength | 100G PAM4 | 100Glambda MSA |
400G OSFP SR8
Connect a 400G OSFP SR8 transceiver with another 400G OSFP SR8 transceiver over an MTP-16/MPO-16 cable.
400G OSFP SR8 to 2× 200G SR4 over MPO-16 to 2× MPO-8 breakout cable.
400G OSFP SR8 to 8× 50G SFP via MTP-16 to 8× LC duplex breakout cable with up to 100m.
400G OSFP DR4
400G OSFP DR4 to 400G OSFP DR4 over an MTP-12/MPO-12 cable.
400G OSFP DR4 to 4× 100G DR4 over MTP-12/MPO-12 to 4× LC duplex breakout cable.
400G OSFP FR4
400G OSFP FR4 to 400G OSFP FR4 over duplex LC cable.
400G OSFP 2FR4
OSFP 2FR4 can break out to 2× 200G and interop with 2× 200G-FR4 QSFP transceivers via 2× CS to 2× LC duplex cable.
