Books of 2024: Part 1

Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their notable reads during the year. Harald Bock, Jonathan Homa, and Maxim Kuschenrov kick off with their chosen books.

Source: Shutterstock

Harald Bock, Vice President Network Architecture, Infinera

I love reading but have not read as many books as I would have liked in recent years. I decided to change that in 2024.

My pick of fictional books this year was mainly classic science fiction after seeing the movie Dune Part 2 with my family. I read the book Dune by Frank Herbert, published in 1965, a while ago, and I wasn't sure that the movies did the book justice.

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Podcast: Is AI driving a new wave of photonic innovation?

AI is still in its infancy, but it’s already pushing the photonics and computing industries to rethink product roadmaps and drive new levels of innovation.

Adtran's Gareth Spence talks with authors and analysts Daryl Inniss and the editor of Gazettabyte about the fast pace of AI development and the changes needed to unlock its full potential. They also discuss the upcoming sequel to their book on silicon photonics and its focus on AI. 

To listen to the podcast, click here.

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NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 locks onto bottleneck code

• NextSilicon has developed a novel chip that adapts its hardware to accelerate high-performance computing applications.
• The Maverick-2 is claimed to have up to 4x the processing performance per watt of graphics processing units (GPUs) and 20x that of high-performance general processors (CPUs).

After years of work, the start-up NextSilicon has detailed its Maverick-2, what it claims is a new class of accelerator chip.

Brandon Draeger

A key complement to the chip is NextSilicon’s software, which parses the high-performance computing application before mapping it onto the Maverick-2. 

“CPUs and GPUs treat all the code equally,” says Brandon Draeger, vice president of marketing at NextSilicon. “Our approach looks at the most important, critical part of the high-performance computing application and we focus on accelerating that.”

With the unveiling of the Maverick-2 NextSilicon has exited its secrecy period.

Founded in 2017, the start-up has raised $303 million in funding and has 300 staff.  The company is opening two design centres—in Serbia and Switzerland—with a third planned for India. The bulk of the company’s staff is located in Israel.

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By invitation: Professor Roel Baets on Silicon Photonics 4.0

Roel Baets, Emeritus Professor at Ghent University and former Group Leader at imec gave a plenary talk on 'Silicon Photonics 4.0' at the recent ECOC conference. "It will be important for silicon photonics to make use of smart and agile manufacturing, a notion associated with Industry 4.0," said Professor Baets, explaining the title.

In a guest piece, he explains his thoughts and discusses what he saw at ECOC. He also has a request.

Source: ECOC

One of the things I discussed in my ECOC plenary talk was the large gap between research and product development for new applications of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on the one hand, and product sales and new industrial process flows on the other.

Among many reasons for this gap, one stands out: the major barriers that fabless start-ups face when developing a product based on a still immature industrial supply chain.

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The markets for photonic integrated circuits in 2030

What will be the leading markets for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) by the decade's end? And what are the challenges facing the PIC industry?

SiLC Technologies' Lidar PIC. Source: SiLC Technologies.

A panel session at the recent PIC Summit Europe event held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, looked at what would be the markets for photonic integrated circuits by 2030.

The market for PICs is dominated by datacom and telecom. However, emerging applications include medical and wearable devices, optical computing, autonomous vehicles, and sensing applications for the oil, gas, water, and agriculture industries.

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ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Final Part

In the final part, industry figures share their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Contributions are from Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers, Lightwave Logic’s Michael Lebby, and Heavy Reading’s Sterling Perrin.

ECOC exhibition floor

Jörg-Peter Elbers, senior vice presendent, advanced technology, standards and IPR, Adtran, and a General Chair at this year’s ECOC.

ECOC celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. It was great to see scientists, engineers, and industry leaders from all around the globe at a vibrant gathering in Frankfurt.

ECOC dates to September 1975 when the inaugural event – dubbed the “European Conference on Optical Fiber Technology” - was held in London. In the early days, the focus was on megabit-per-second transmission for telephony applications. Now, we are advancing to petabit-per-second speeds to meet AI and cloud services demands. 

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ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Part III

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Here are contributions from Aloe Semiconductor's Chris Doerr, Hacene Chaouch of Arista Networks, and Lumentum's Marc Stiller.

Autumn morning near the ECOC congress centre in Frankfurt

Chris Doerr, CEO of Aloe Semiconductor

If there was one overall message from ECOC 2024 this year, it is that incumbent technologies are winning in the communications market.

Copper is not giving up. It consumes less power and is cheaper than optics, and now, more electronics such as retimers are being applied to keep direct-attach copper (DAC) cables going.  Also, 200-plus gigabaud (GBd) made a debut in coherent optics, but in intensity-modulation direct-detect (IMDD), 50GBd and 100GBd look like they are here to stay for several more years.

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