Sense and sustainability

What causes someone to change roles, to turn to sustainability after years as a distinguished engineer? An interview with Klaus Grobe of ADVA; the second in a series of articles about work.

Klaus Grobe spent nine productive years as part of the Advanced Technology team at ADVA. 

Grobe had authored 150 academic papers, issued 25 patents, and had published, along with co-author Michael Eiselt, a textbook on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) when, in 2015, he decided to switch roles and become ADVA’s director of sustainability. 

Two factors influenced his decision: one was the importance he attached to the topic of carbon emissions and global warming, the second was a sense that it was time for a change. 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that being a technologist had become boring but it wasn’t that exciting anymore,” says Grobe. “I was looking for something new and perhaps more relevant.” 

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Interview: Finisar’s CEO reflects on a notable year

Michael Hurlston has had an eventful 2018. 

The year started with him replacing Finisar’s veteran CEO, Jerry Rawls, and it is now ending with Finisar being acquired by the firm II-VI for $3.2 billion.

Michael Hurlston

Finisar is Hurlston’s first experience in the optical component industry, having spent his career in semiconductors. One year in and he already has strong views about the industry and its direction.

“We have seen in the semiconductor industry a period of massive consolidation in the last three to four years,” says Hurlston, in his first interview sinced the deal was announced. “I think it is not that different in optics: scales matters.”    

Hurlston says that, right from the start, he recognised the need to drive industry consolidation. “We had started thinking about that fairly deeply at the time the Lumentum-Oclaro acquisition was announced and that gave us more impetus to look at this,” says Hurlston. The result was revealed in November with the announced acquisition of Finisar by II-VI.

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Finisar's 10 Gig bi-directional DWDM architecture

Finisar has developed a bi-directional 10-gigabit SFP+ module for the metro-access market. The dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) module is designed to expand capacity at locations where fibre is scarce. And being tunable, the SFP+ also simplifies network planning for the operators.

Finisar demonstrated the module working at the recent ECOC 2017 show held in Gothenburg.

Market applications

Interest is growing in using WDM optics for wireless, metro-access and cable networks that are undergoing upgrades. The interest in WDM at the network edge is due to a need to use fibre resources more efficiently. “We are seeing that globally, more and more dark fibre is being used up,” says Leo Lin, director of product line management at Finisar.

Leo LinGiven the cost of leasing and installing fibre, operators are keen to make the best use of their existing fibre and are willing to pay more for WDM optics.

According to Finisar, leasing a fibre can cost $250-$2,000 per fibre annually while the cost of installing fibre can be $500,000 per 10km. “Using WDM optics, you can get payback in less than a year,” says Lin.

LightCounting Market Research's latest forecast estimates that the global wireless transceiver market for 10 gigabit WDM will be approximately $400 million in 2022.

Finisar’s bi-directional 10-gigabit SFP+ product is also being aimed at two emerging ITU Telecom standards: G.metro and NG-PON2. 

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Oclaro’s 400-gigabit plans

Adam Carter, Oclaro’s chief commercial officer, discusses the company’s 400-gigabit and higher-speed coherent optical transmission plans and the 400-gigabit client-side pluggable opportunity.    

Oclaro showcased its first coherent module that uses Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai digital signal processor at the ECOC show held recently in Gothenburg.

Adam CarterOclaro is one of three optical module makers, the others being Lumentum and NeoPhotonics, that signed an agreement with Ciena earlier this year to use the system vendor’s DSP technology and know-how to bring coherent modules to market. The first product resulting from the collaboration is a 5x7-inch board-mounted module that supports 400-gigabits on a single-wavelength.   

The first WaveLogic Ai-based modules are already being tested at several of Oclaro’s customers’ labs. “They [the module samples] are very preliminary,” says Adam Carter, the chief commercial officer at Oclaro. “The really important timeframe is when we get towards the new year because then we will have beta samples.”

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The era of cloud-scale routeing

Nokia's FP4 p-chip. The multi-chip module shows five packages: the p-chip die surrounded by four memory stacks. Each stack has five memory die. The p-chip and memory stacks are interconnected using an interposer.

• Nokia has unveiled the FP4, a 2.4 terabit-per-second network processor that has 6x the throughput of its existing FP3. 
• The FP4 is a four-IC chipset implemented using 16nm CMOS FinFET technology. Two of the four devices in the chipset are multi-chip modules.
• The FP4 uses 56 gigabit-per-second serial-deserialiser (serdes) technology from Broadcom, implemented using PAM-4 modulation. It also supports terabit flows.
• Nokia announced IP edge and core router platforms that will use the FP4, the largest configuration being a 0.58 petabit switching capacity router. 

Much can happen in an internet minute. In that time, 4.1 million YouTube videos are viewed, compared to 2.8 million views a minute only last year. Meanwhile, new internet uses continue to emerge. Take voice-activated devices, for example. Amazon ships 50 of its Echo devices every minute, almost one a second.

Given all that happens each minute, predicting where the internet will be in a decade’s time is challenging. But that is the task Alcatel-Lucent’s (now Nokia’s) chip designers set themselves in 2011 after the launch of its FP3 network processor chipset that powers its IP-router platforms.

Six years on and its successor - the FP4 - has just been announced. The FP4 is the industry’s first multi-terabit network processor that will be the mainstay of Nokia’s IP router platforms for years to come.

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Meeting the many needs of data centre interconnect

High capacity. Density. Power efficiency. Client-side optical interface choices. Coherent transmission. Direct detection. Open line system. Just some of the requirements vendors must offer to compete in the data centre interconnect market.

“A key lesson learned from all our interactions over the years is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” says Jörg-Peter Elbers, senior vice president of advanced technology, standards and IPR at ADVA Optical Networking. “What is important is that you have a portfolio to give customers what they need.”

 Jörg-Peter Elbers

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Talking markets: Oclaro on 100 gigabits and beyond

Oclaro’s chief commercial officer, Adam Carter, discusses the 100-gigabit market, optical module trends, silicon photonics, and why this is a good time to be an optical component maker.

Oclaro has started its first quarter 2017 fiscal results as it ended fiscal year 2016 with another record quarter. The company reported revenues of $136 million in the quarter ending in September, 8 percent sequential growth and the company's fifth consecutive quarter of 7 percent or greater revenue growth.

Adam CarterA large part of Oclaro’s growth was due to strong demand for 100 gigabits across the company’s optical module and component portfolio.

The company has been supplying 100-gigabit client-side optics using the CFP, CFP2 and CFP4 pluggable form factors for a while. “What we saw in June was the first real production ramp of our CFP2-ACO [coherent] module,” says Adam Carter, chief commercial officer at Oclaro. “We have transferred all that manufacturing over to Asia now.”

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