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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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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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Final part

In the final part, Chris Cole, Ranovus' Hojjat Salemi, and Infinera's Harald Bock share their thoughts about the revent OFC show. 

Chris Cole, Consultant

OFC and optics were back with a vengeance. The high level of excitement and participation in the technical and exhibit programmes was fueled by artifical intelligence/ machine learning (AI/ML). To moderate this exuberance, a few reality checks are offered.

During the Optica Executive Forum, held on the Monday, one of the panels was with optics industry CEOs. They were asked if AI/ML is a bubble, and all five said no. They are right that there is a real, dramatic increase in optics demand driven by AI/ML, with solid projections showing exponential growth.

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OFC 2023 show preview

• Sunday, March 5 marks the start of the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference in San Diego, California
• The three General Chairs - Ramon Casellas, Chris Cole, and Ming-Jun Li - discuss the upcoming conference

OFC 2023 will be a show of multiple themes. That, at least, is the view of the team overseeing and coordinating this year's conference and exhibition.

General Chair Ming-Jun Li of Corning who is also the recipient of the 2023 John Tyndall Award (see profiles, bottom), begins by highlighting the 1,000 paper submissions, suggesting that OFC has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Ramon Casellas, another General Chair, highlights this year's emphasis on the social aspects of technology. "We are trying not to forget what we are doing and why we are doing it," he says.

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Taking a unique angle to platform design

• A novel design based on a vertical line card shortens the trace length between an ASIC and pluggable modules.
• Reducing the trace length improves signal integrity while maintaining the merits of using pluggables.
• Using the vertical line card design will extend for at least two more generations the use of pluggables with Ethernet switches.

The travelling salesperson problem involves working out the shortest route on a round-trip to multiple cities. It's a well-known complex optimisation problem.

Chris Cole

Systems engineers face their own complex optimisation problem just sending an electrical signal between two points, connecting an Ethernet switch chip to a pluggable optical module, for example.

Sending the high-speed signal over the link with sufficient fidelity for its recovery requires considerable electronic engineering design skills. And with each generation of electrical signalling, link distances are getting shorter.

In a paper presented at the recent ECOC show, held in Basel, consultant Chris Cole, working with Yamaichi Electronics, outlined a novel design that shortens the distance between an Ethernet switch chip and the front-panel optics.

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ECOC '22 Reflections - Part 2

Gazettabyte is asking industry and academic figures for their thoughts after attending ECOC 2022, held in Basel, Switzerland. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned, and what, if anything, surprised them. 

maytikka, Shutterstock.com

In Part 2, Broadcom‘s Rajiv Pancholy, optical communications advisor, Chris Cole, LightCouting’s Vladimir Kozlov, Ciena’s Helen Xenos, and Synopsys’ Twan Korthorst share their thoughts.

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The future of optical I/O is more parallel links

Chris Cole has a lofty vantage point regarding how optical interfaces will likely evolve.

As well as being an adviser to the firm II-VI, Cole is Chair of the Continuous Wave-Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CW-WDM) multi-source agreement (MSA). 

Chris Cole

The CW-WDM MSA recently published its first specification document defining the wavelength grids for emerging applications that require eight, 16 or even 32 optical channels.

And if that wasn’t enough, Cole is also the Co-Chair of the OSFP MSA, which will standardise the OSFP-XD (XD standing for extra dense) 1.6-terabit pluggable form factor that will initially use 16, 100 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) electrical lanes. And when 200Gbps electrical input-output (I/O) technology is developed, OSFP-XD will become a 3.2-terabit module. 

Directly interfacing with 100Gbps ASIC serialiser/ deserialiser (serdes) lanes means the 1.6-terabit module can support 51.2-terabit single rack unit (1RU) Ethernet switches without needing 200Gbps ASIC serdes required by eight-lane modules like the OSFP.

“You might argue that it [the OSFP-XD] is just postponing what the CW-WDM MSA is doing,” says Cole. “But I’d argue the opposite: if you fundamentally want to solve problems, you have to go parallel.”

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