AI and optics: An OFC conversation

An OFC conversation with Adtran's Gareth Spence and consultant Daryl Inniss about the AI opportunity for photonics, click here.   

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 2

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. Here are the thoughts from Ciena, Celestial AI and Heavy Reading.

Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development at Ciena.

Power efficiency was a key theme at OFC this year. Although it has been a prevalent topic for some time, it stood out more than usual at OFC 2024 as the industry strives to make further improvements.

There was a vast array of presentations focused on power efficiency gains and technological advancements, with sessions highlighting picojoule-per-bit (pJ/b) requirements, high-speed interconnect evolution including co-packaged optics (CPO), linear pluggable optics (LPO), and linear retimer optics (LRO), as well as new materials like thin-film lithium niobate, coherent transceiver evolution, and liquid cooling.

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How scaling optical networks is soon to change

Carrier division multiplexing and spatial division multiplexing (CSDM) are both needed, argues Lumentum’s Brian Smith.

The era of coherent-based optical transmission as is implemented today is coming to an end, argues Lumentum in a White Paper. 

Brian Smith

The author of the paper, Brian Smith, product and technology strategy, CTO Office at Lumentum, says two factors account for the looming change.

One is Shannon’s limit that defines how much information can be sent across a communications channel, in this case an optical fibre.

The second, less discussed regarding coherent-based optical transport, is how Moore’s law is slowing down.

”Both are happening coincidentally,” says Smith. “We believe what that means is that we, as an industry, are going to have to change how we scale capacity.”

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OFC 2024 industry reflections

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned and what, if anything, surprised them. Here are the first responses from Huawei, Drut Technologies and Aloe Semiconductor.

Maxim Kuschnerov, Director R&D, Optical & Quantum Communication Laboratory at Huawei.

Some ten years ago datacom took the helm of the optical transceiver market from legacy telecom operators to command a much larger volume of short-reach optics and extend its vision into dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM).

At OFC, the industry witnessed another passing-of-the-torch moment as Nvidia took over the dominant position in the optics market where AI compute is driving optical communication. The old guard of Google is now following while others are closely watching.

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Teramount’s scalable fibre-attach for co-packaged optics

Part 2: Co-packaged optics: fibre-attach

Hesham Taha recently returned from a trip to the US to meet with leading vendors and players serving the silicon photonics industry.

“It is important to continue probing the industry,” says Taha, the CEO of start-up Teramount.

Teramount specialises in fibre assembly technology: coupling fibre to silicon photonics chips.

Taha is now back in the US, this time to unveil Teramount’s latest product at this week’s OFC show being held in San Diego. The company is detailing a new version of its fibre assembly technology, dubbed Teraverse-XD, that doubles the density of fibres connected to a silicon photonics chip.

Teramount is also announcing it is working with GlobalFoundries, a leading silicon-photonics foundry.

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A coherent roadmap for co-packaged optics

Is coherent optics how co-packaged will continue to scale? Pilot Photonics certainly thinks so.

Part 1: Co-packaged optics 

Frank Smyth

Frank Smyth, CTO and founder of Pilot Photonics, believes the firm is at an important inflection point. 

Known for its comb laser technology, Pilot Photonics has just been awarded a €2.5 million European Innovation Council grant to develop its light-source technology for co-packaged optics. 

The Irish start-up is also moving to much larger premises and is on a recruitment drive. “Many of our projects and technologies are maturing,” says Smyth. 

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DustPhotonics raises funding for 800G and 1.6T modules

• DustPhotonics has raised $24 million in funding.
• The start-up has taped out its 200 gigabit-per-lane optical chip.
• DustPhotonics expects the 1.6-terabit module market to ramp, starting year-end.

Ronnen Lovinger

DustPhotonics, which develops chips for transmit optical sub-assemblies (TOSAs) for 400 and 800-gigabit pluggable optical modules, has raised $24 million. The funding extends its Series B funding round.

"When you start ramping up products, you have to iron out the creases around supply chain, production, and everything else," says Ronnen Lovinger, CEO of DustPhotonics.

DustPhotonics has several customers and a backlog of orders for its 400 and 800-gigabit photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The company has also taped out its 200 gigabit-per-lane chip and will have products later this year.

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