ECOC 2025: industry reflections

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending ECOC 2025 in Copenhagen. Here are the first contributions from LightWave Logic's Yves LeMaitre, Maxim Kuschnerov of Huawei, and LightCounting's Daryl Inniss.

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen

Yves LeMaitre, CEO of LightWave Logic

The optical centre of gravity has shifted towards AI networking; everything else is becoming an afterthought. Even data centre interconnect/ ZR coherent optics, a major topic at OFC2025, is relegated to a secondary topic.

The achievement of 400G/lane is happening faster than everyone thought. The race to chiplets, co-packaged optics, integration and the co-packaging of Electronic and photonic ICs (EICs/PICs) is what will define the winners of tomorrow. Winning in the transceiver world might feed you today, but you'd better adjust quickly to the new AI world order.

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Fueling the AI Revolution: Silicon Photonics Book 2.0

How is silicon photonics powering the AI revolution and benefitting industries from autonomous vehicles to healthcare? A new edition of the book, Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Information Revolution will reveal the answers.

A decade ago, the editor of Gazettabyte and Daryl Inniss, now Principal Market Analyst at LightCounting Market Research, wrote the book: Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Information Revolution, published by Morgan Kaufmann, part of Elsevier.

We are delighted to report that we have agreed with the publisher to proceed with a second edition.

Many of the arguments about how silicon photonics would develop, as made in the first book, have come to pass. But much has also changed, AI’s phenomenal rise and the emergence of massive AI computing clusters that work only because of photonics enabling their vast networking needs. 

While AI will be the primary driver of silicon photonics in the coming years, the book will touch on emerging non-datacom/telecoms applications for silicon photonics such as Lidar and biosensors.

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Ciena becomes a computer weaver

• Ciena is to buy optical interconnect start-up Nubis Communications for $270 million.
• The deal covers optical and copper interconnect technology for data centres

Ciena has announced its intention to buy optical engine specialist Nubis Communications for $270 million. If the network is the computer, Nubis' optical engine and copper integrated circuit (IC) expertise will help Ciena better stitch together AI's massive compute fabric.

Source: Ciena

Ciena signalled its intention to target the data centre earlier this year at the OFC show when it showcased its high-speed 448-gigabit serialiser-deserialiser IC technology and coherent lite modem. Now, Ciena has made a move for start-up Nubis, which plays at the core of AI data centres.

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OFC 2025 industry reflections - Final Part

Gazettabyte has been asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the OFC conference held in San Francisco.

In the final part, Arista’s Vijay Vusirikala and Andy Bechtolsheim, Chris Doerr of Aloe Semiconductor, Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers, and Omdia’s Daryl Inniss share their learnings. Vusirikala, Doerr, and Elbers all participated in OFC’s excellent Rump Session.

Muir Woods National Monument, outside San Francisco

Vijay Vusirikala, Distinguished Lead, AI Systems and Networks, and Andy Bechtolsheim, Chief Architect, at Arista Networks.

OFC 2025 wasn't just another conference. The event felt like a significant momentum-gaining inflexion point, buzzing with an energy reminiscent of the Dot.com era optical boom.

This palpable excitement, reflected in record attendance and exhibitor numbers, was accentuated for the broader community by the context set at Nvidia’s GTC event held two weeks before OFC, highlighting the critical role optical technologies play in enabling next-generation AI infrastructure. 

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OFC 2025: reflecting on the busiest optics show in years

Adtran's Gareth Spence interviews Omdia's Daryl Inniss (left) and the editor of Gazettabyte, live from the conference hall at OFC 2025. 

The discussion covers the hot topics of the show and where the industry is headed next. Click here.

Podcast: Is AI driving a new wave of photonic innovation?

AI is still in its infancy, but it’s already pushing the photonics and computing industries to rethink product roadmaps and drive new levels of innovation.

Adtran's Gareth Spence talks with authors and analysts Daryl Inniss and the editor of Gazettabyte about the fast pace of AI development and the changes needed to unlock its full potential. They also discuss the upcoming sequel to their book on silicon photonics and its focus on AI. 

To listen to the podcast, click here.

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 3

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. Here are the thoughts of BT's Professor Andrew Lord, author and consultant, Daryl Inniss, and Cignal AI's Kyle Hollasch.

Andrew Lord, senior manager of research and optical networks, BT Group.

I am excited to see the developments around 100G ZR pluggables. Assuming they can hit the power requirements, I can imagine them being used across the edge for years to come.

I learned that there is some confidence in the optical community that optics has a significant part to play in the AI revolution. But this is still primarily associated with high bit rate transport, whether it be fibres or inter-chip. Photonic integrated switches to assist with future GPUs is, on the other hand, likely to be limited by the wavelength of light and resulting small numbers of components on a realistic-sized photonic integrated circuit.

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