OFC/NFOEC 2012: Some of the exhibition highlights

A round-up of some of the main announcements and demonstrations at the recent OFC/NFOEC 2012 exhibition and conference.

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Huawei's novel Petabit switch

The Chinese equipment maker showcased a prototype optical switch at this year's OFC/NFOEC that can scale to 10 Petabit. 

"Although the numbers [400,000 lasers] appear quite staggering, they point to a need for photonic integration"

Reg Wilcox, Huawei

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OFC/NFOEC 2012 industry reflections - Part 1

The recent OFC/NFOEC show, held in Los Angeles, had a strong vendor presence. Gazettabyte spoke with Infinera's Dave Welch, chief strategy officer and executive vice president, about his impressions of the show, capacity challenges facing the industry, and the importance of the company's photonic integrated circuit technology in light of recent competitor announcements.

OFC/NFOEC reflections: Part 1 

"I need as much fibre capacity as I can get, but I also need reach" 

Dave Welch, Infinera

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100 Gigabit direct detection gains wider backing

More vendors are coming to market with 100 Gigabit direct detection products for metro and private networks. 

The emergence of a second de-facto 100 Gigabit standard, a complement to 100 Gigabit coherent, gained credence with 4x28 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) direct detect announcements from Finisar and Oclaro and likely backing from system vendor, ECI Telecom.

 

"We believe that in some cases operators will prefer to go with this technology instead of coherent"

Shai Stein, CTO, ECI Telecom 

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Altera optical FPGA in 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic demo

Altera is demonstrating its optical FPGA at OFC/NFOEC, being held in Los Angeles this week. The FPGA, coupled to parallel optical interfaces, is being used to send and receive 100 Gigabit Ethernet packets of various sizes. 

The technology demonstrator comprises an Altera Stratix IV FPGA with 28, 11.3Gbps electrical transceivers coupled to two Avago Technologies' MicroPod optical modules. 

"FPGAs are now being used for full system level solutions"

Kevin Cackovic, Altera

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Challenges, progress & uncertainties facing the optical component industry

In recent years the industry has moved from direct detection to coherent transmission and has alighted on a flexible ROADM architecture. The result is a new level in optical networking sophistication. OFC/NFOEC 2012 will showcase the progress in these and other areas of industry consensus as well as shining a spotlight on issues less clear.

Optical component players may be forgiven for the odd envious glance towards the semiconductor industry and its well-defined industry dynamics. 

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Will LTE lead to new revenues for the operators?

The opportunities and challenges the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard poses for mobile operators. An article for the Mobile World Congress show for the magazine Informilo, click here.