ECOC 2025 industry reflections - Part 3

In Part 3, four more executives, including Benny Mikkelson, Chris Cole, and Antonio Tartaglia, share their learnings from ECOC 2025.

 Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

Benny Mikkelson, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Cisco’s Coherent Products (Acacia) team, Co-Founder of Acacia

With this year’s ECOC being one of the largest on record, it was an honour to return to my home country of Denmark to deliver a plenary talk during the opening ceremony.

AI was once again a central theme, with significant discussion around ‘scale-across,’ a new category of AI compute fabric connectivity designed to link AI workloads across multiple data centres. This is a topic we have been engaging with our customers on for some time, and it is good to see industry alignment.

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 4

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. This penultimate part includes the thoughts of Cisco’s Ron Horan, Coherent’s Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi, and Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers.

Ron Horan, Vice President Product Management, Client Optics Group, Cisco   

Several years ago, no one could have predicted how extensive the network infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) back-end networks in data centres would be. This year's OFC answered that question. In a word, immense.

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The APC’s blueprint for silicon photonics

The Advanced Photonics Coalition (APC) wants to smooth the path for silicon photonics to become a high-volume manufacturing technology.

Jeffery Maki

The organisation is talking to companies to tackle issues whose solutions will benefit the photonics technology.

The Advanced Photonics Coalition wants to act as an industry catalyst to prove technologies and reduce the risk associated with their development, says Jeffery Maki, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks and a member of the Advanced Photonics Coalition's board.

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Deutsche Telekom explains its IP-over-DWDM thinking

Telecom operators are always seeking better ways to run their networks. In particular, operators regularly scrutinise how best to couple the IP layer with their optical networking infrastructure.

The advent of 400-gigabit coherent modules that plug directly into an IP router is one development that has caught their eye.

Placing dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) interfaces directly onto an IP router allows the removal of a separate transponder box and its interfacing.

IP-over-DWDM is not a new concept. However, until now, operators have had to add a coherent line card, taking up valuable router chassis space.

Werner Weiershausen

Now, with the advent of compact 400-gigabit coherent pluggables developed for the hyperscalers to link their data centres, telecom operators have realised that such pluggables also serve their needs.

BT will start rolling out IP-over-DWDM in its network this year, while Deutsche Telekom has analysed the merits of IP-over-DWDM.

"The adoption of IP-over-DWDM is the subject of our techno-economical studies," says Werner Weiershausen, senior architect for the transport network at Deutsche Telekom.

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Acacia's single-wavelength terabit coherent module

• Acacia has developed a 140-gigabaud, 1.2-terabit coherent module

• The module, using 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM), can deliver an 800-gigabit wavelength over 90 per cent of the links of a North American operator.  

Acacia Communications, now part of Cisco, has announced the first 1.2-terabit single-wavelength coherent pluggable transceiver.

Tom Williams

And the first vendor, ZTE, has already showcased a prototype using Acacia’s single-carrier 1.2 terabit-per-second (Tbps) design.

The coherent module operates at a symbol rate of up to 140 gigabaud (GBd) using silicon photonics technology. Until now, indium phosphide has always been the material at the forefront of each symbol rate hike.

The module uses Acacia’s latest Jannu coherent digital signal processor (DSP), implemented in 5nm CMOS. The coherent transceiver also uses a custom form-factor pluggable dubbed the Coherent Interconnect Module 8 (CIM-8).

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ADVA’s 800-gigabit CoreChannel causes a stir

ADVA’s latest addition to its FSP 3000 TeraFlex platform provides 800-gigabit optical transmission. But the announcement has caused a kerfuffle among its optical transport rivals.

ADVA’s TeraFlex platform supports various coherent optical transport sleds, a sled being a pluggable modular unit that customises a platform’s functionality.

Stephan RettenbergerThe coherent sleds use Cisco’s (formerly Acacia Communication’s) AC1200 optical engine. Cisco completed the acquisition of Acacia in March.

The AC1200 comprises a 16nm CMOS Pico coherent digital signal processor (DSP) that supports two wavelengths, each up to 600-gigabit, and two photonic integrated circuits (PICs), for a maximum capacity of 1.2 terabits.

The latest sled from ADVA, dubbed CoreChannel, supports an 800-gigabit stream in a single channel.

ADVA states in its press release that the CoreChannel uses “140 gigabaud (GBd) sub-carrier technology” to deliver 800-gigabit over distances exceeding 1,600km.

This, the company says, improves reach by over 50 per cent compared with state-of-the-art 95GBd symbol rate coherent technologies.

It is these claims that have its rivals reacting.

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Verizon tips silicon photonics as a key systems enabler

Verizon's director of optical transport network architecture and design, Glenn Wellbrock, shares the operator’s thoughts regarding silicon photonics.

Part 3: An operator view

Glenn Wellbrock is upbeat about silicon photonics’ prospects. Challenges remain, he says, but the industry is making progress. “Fundamentally, we believe silicon photonics is a real enabler,” he says. “It is the only way to get to the densities that we want.”

Glenn Wellbrock

Wellbrock adds that indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can also achieve such densities.

But there are many potential silicon photonics suppliers because of its relatively low barrier to entry, unlike indium phosphide. "To date, Infinera has been the only real [indium phosphide] PIC company and they build only for their own platform,” says Wellbrock.

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