ECOC '15 Reflections: Part 2

Part 2: More industry executives share the trends and highlights they noted at the recent European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) event, held in Valencia. 

Martin Zirngibl, head of network enabling components and technologies at Bell Labs. 

Silicon Photonics is seeming to gain traction, but traditional component suppliers are still betting on indium phosphide.

There are many new start-ups in silicon photonics, most seem to be going after the 100 gigabit QSFP28 market. However, silicon photonics still needs a ubiquitous high-volume application for the foundry model to be sustainable.

There is a battle between 4x25 Gig CWDM and 100 Gig PAM-4 56 gigabaud, with most people believing that 400 Gig PAM-4 or discrete multi-tone with 100 Gig per lambda will win.

Will coherent make it into black and white applications - up to 80 km - or is there a role for a low-cost wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system with direct detection?

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Hybrid integration specialist Kaiam acquires Gemfire

Kaiam Corp. has secured US $16M in C-round funding and completed the acquisition of Gemfire.

"We have a micro-machine technology that allows us to use standard pick-and-place electronic assembly tools, and with our micro-machine, we achieve sub-micron alignment tolerances suitable for single-mode applications"

Byron Trop, Kaiam

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