The long game: Acacia's coherent vision

In 2007, Christian Rasmussen made a career-defining gamble. After attending a conference featuring presentations on coherent optical transmission, he returned home, consulted his family, and quit his job at Mintera, then an optical networking equipment maker.

Christian Rasmussen

The technology he'd seen discussed promised to solve the transmission impairments associated with direct-detection-based optical transmission – chromatic dispersion and polarisation mode dispersion - that had stymied optical transport to go beyond 40 gigabits-per-second (Gbps).

"We came back and were completely excited that there was a technology that addressed all the problems that we had experienced firsthand," says Rasmussen, now Chief Technology Officer at Acacia.

His bet paid off. Acacia which he helped co-found in 2009, had a successful IPO in 2016 and would later be acquired by Cisco Systems for $4.5 billion in 2021.

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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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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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ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Part II

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Here are contributions from Nubis Communications' Dan Harding, imec's Peter Ossieur, and Chris Cole.

Dan Harding, CEO, Nubis Communications

Our biggest takeaway from ECOC is the increased confidence not just in 200-gigabit electrical and optical interfaces but also in 400 gigabit. It is becoming clear that in 2025 and 2026, the industry will broadly launch platforms using a 200 gigabit per lane serdes [serialiser/deserialiser interfaces] that will connect to 200 gigabit per lane optics.

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ECOC 2024 industry reflections

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Here are the first contributions from Huawei's Maxim Kuschnerov, Coherent's Vipul Bhatt, and Broadcom's Rajiv Pancholy.

Source: Shutterstock

Maxim Kuschnerov, Director R&D, Optical & Quantum Communication Laboratory at Huawei.

At ECOC, my main interest concerned the evolution of data centre networking to 400 gigabits per lane for optics and electronics. Historically, the adoption of new optical line rates always preceded the serdes electrical interconnects but now copper cables are likely to drive much of the leading development work at 400 gigabit per lane.

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Pluggable optics in need of a makeover

Current pluggable optics have stunted optical innovation for the last decade. So argues Chris Cole, industry veteran and an advisor at start-up Quintessent.

Chris Cole

Cole calls for a new form factor supporting hundreds of electrical and optical channels. In a workshop on massively parallel optics held at the recent ECOC conference and exhibition in Frankfurt, he outlined other important specifications such a module should have.

Cole, working with other interested parties in the new form factor, will present their proposal to the OIF industry body at its next meeting in November.

"I'm very optimistic it will be approved," says Cole.

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