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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Neil McRae: What’s next for the telecom industry

In a talk at the FutureNet World conference, held in London on May 3-4, Neil McRae explains why he is upbeat about the telecoms industry's prospects

Neil McRae at Futurenet World, London earlier this month.

Neil McRae is tasked with giving the final talk of the two-day FutureNet World conference.

"Yeah, I'm on the graveyard shift," he quips.

McRae, the former chief network architect at BT, is now chief network strategist at Juniper Network. 

The talk’s title is "What's Next", McRae's take on the telecom industry and how it can grow.

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OpenLight's CEO on its silicon photonics strategy

Adam Carter, recently appointed the CEO of OpenLight, discusses the company’s strategy and the market opportunities for silicon photonics.

Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight

Adam Carter’s path to becoming OpenLight’s first CEO is a circuitous one.

OpenLight, a start-up, offers the marketplace an open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers and gain blocks.

Having worked at Cisco and Oclaro, which was acquired by Lumentum in 2018, Carter decided to take six months off. Covid then hit, prolonging his time out.

Carter returned as a consultant working with firms, including a venture capitalist (VC). The VC alerted him about OpenLight’s search for a CEO.

Carter’s interest in OpenLight was immediate. He already knew the technology and OpenLight’s engineering team and recognised the platform’s market potential.

“If it works in the way I think it can work, it [the platform] could be very interesting for many companies who don't have access to the [silicon photonics] technology,” says Carter.

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OpenLight's integrated-laser silicon photonics platform

• OpenLight is an independent silicon photonics company backed by Synopsys and Juniper Networks 
• The company was created by carving out the silicon photonics arm of Juniper
• The establishment of OpenLight and its open platform highlights the growing maturity of silicon photonics as new applications emerge beyond datacom and telecom

Thomas Mader, OpenLight

OpenLight is coming to market with an open silicon photonics platform that includes integrated lasers and gain blocks.

Juniper has a long relationship with Synopsys, using its electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) tools.

So when Juniper said it was spinning out its silicon photonics group, Synopsys was keen to partner.

The result is OpenLight, of which Synopsys has a 75 per cent stake costing $67.5 million.

Thomas Mader, OpenLight's chief operating officer and formerly head of Juniper's silicon photonics unit, says OpenLight is the first company to offer an open platform that includes monolithically integrated lasers, optical amplifiers and modulators. 

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A voyage around work

The first in a series looking at the experience of work in 2019.

Source: Mark Seery

To land your ideal job, the suggestion is first to find your passion. Indeed, one college in the US promises to guide its students to find their life purpose by teaching them three things: what they are good at, what they are passionate about, and what the world needs.

Assuming you are lucky enough to align all three elements, challenges are still likely. How do you maintain a work-life balance? And what happens over time when, despite having fulfilling, challenging work, part of your creative self remains untapped?

This has been the experience of Mark Seery (pictured below), who was a senior staff member at Juniper Networks, responsible for helping shape the networking company’s strategy.

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Juniper bolsters its MX routers with packet processing ASIC

Juniper Networks has developed its next-generation packet processor, a single-chip package that includes 3D-stacked high-bandwidth memory. The device’s first use will be to enhance three of Juniper’s flagship MX series edge routers. 

The company has also announced software for the 5G cellular standard that separates the control and user planes, known as CUPS, and two new MX-series platforms that will use the company’s universal chassis.

The company’s MX series edge routers were first introduced in 2007. “The MX is a platform that is at the heart of our service provider customers globally, as well as a number of our cloud provider and enterprise customers,” says Sally Bament, Juniper’s vice president of service provider marketing (pictured).       

The latest enhancements will provide the MX edge router customers with another decade of support to meet their evolving service requirements, says Bament.

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Verizon, Ciena and Juniper trial 400 Gigabit Ethernet

Verizon has sent a 400 Gigabit Ethernet signal over its network, carried using a 400-gigabit optical wavelength.

The trial’s goal was to demonstrate multi-vendor interoperability and in particular the interoperability of standardised 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) client signals.

Glenn Wellbrock“[400GbE] Interoperability with the client side has been the long pole in the tent - and continues to be,” says Glenn Wellbrock, director, optical transport network - architecture, design and planning at Verizon. “This was trial equipment, not generally-available equipment.” 

It is only the emergence of standardised modules - in this case, an IEEE 400GbE client-side interface specification - that allows multi-vendor interoperability, he says. 

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