Description The Challenge:The advent of cloud applications and the proliferation of mobile devices have imposed a dramatic increase of the IP traffic. The emerging ZetaByte Era forces operators to seek a cost-efficient way of upgrading their network in order to accommodate the vast amount of data without compromising QoS and wasting bandwidth resources. Technology paradigms shift towards coherent modulation formats for upgrading channel capacity, yet at the cost of power-hungry DSP residing outside the transceiver line cards and bulky component configurations. What is more, current implementations rely on fixed-grid network elements ignoring efficient spectrum management that can benefit from high-order QAM modulation.Vision:SPIRIT aims to build a fully programmable transceiver in a single package for Terabit optical transport networks capable of superchannel grooming on a gridless basis and SDN functionality on board. The new transceiver technology platform targets power and cost savings up to 50%.Project Objectives:SPIRIT aims to fulfill the existing telecommunication gap with a near-to-market transceiver product merging the benefits of high performance and mature photonic and electronic technologies into a single platform. In order to achieve its mission, SPIRIT has defined the following ambitious objectives:Fabrication of high-speed, low-voltage drive, InP modulators with segmented electrodes Fabrication of low-power CMOS Periodically Amplified Travelling-wave Hybrid (PATH) modulator logic and driver arrays Fabrication of an optical MUX/DEMUX based on tunable Si micro-ring filter arrays for superchannel grooming on a gridless basisDevelopment of fully-programmable, high-speed, low-power, integrated photonic and electronic flexible transceiversFixed-grid and gridless 400G, 1T and flexible (super)channel data transport with advanced DSP and monitoring built-in functions enabled by software control