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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The market opportunity for linear drive optics

A key theme at OFC earlier this year that surprised many was linear drive optics. Its attention at the optical communications and networking event was intriguing because linear drive - based on using remote silicon to drive photonics - is not new.

Scott Wilkinson

"I spoke to one company that had a [linear drive] demo on the show floor," says Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst for networking components at Cignal AI. "They had been working on the technology for four years and were taken aback; they weren't expecting people to come by and ask about it. "

The cause of the buzz? Andy Bechtolsheim, famed investor, co-founder and chief development officer of network switching firm Arista Networks and, before that, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

"Andy came out and said this is a big deal, and that got many people talking about it," says Wilkinson, author of a recent linear drive market research report.

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