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.

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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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II-VI’s VCSEL approach for co-packaged optics

Co-packaged optics was a central theme at this year’s OFC show, held in San Diego. But the solutions detailed were primarily using single-mode lasers and fibre.

Vipul Bhatt

The firm II-VI is beating a co-packaged optics path using vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and multi-mode fibre while also pursuing single-mode, silicon photonics-based co-packaged optics.   

For multi-mode, VCSEL-based co-packaging, II-VI is working with IBM, a collaboration that started as part of a U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) project to promote energy-saving technologies.

II-VI claims there are significant system benefits using VCSEL-based co-packaged optics. The benefits include lower power, cost and latency when compared with pluggable optics.

The two key design decisions that achieved power savings are the elimination of the retimer chip - also known as a direct-drive or linear interface - and the use of VCSELs.

The approach - what II-VI calls shortwave co-packaged optics - integrates the VCSELs, chip and optics in the same package.

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II-VI expands its 400G and 800G transceiver portfolio

II-VI has showcased its latest high-speed optics. The need for such client-side modules is being driven by the emergence of next-generation Ethernet switches in the data centre.

The demonstrations, part of the OFC virtual conference and exhibition held last month, featured two 800-gigabit and two 400-gigabit optical transceivers.

“We have seen the mushrooming of a lot of datacom transceiver companies, primarily from China, and some have grown pretty big,” says Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer at II-VI.

Sanjai Parthasarathi

But a key enabler for next-generation modules is the laser. “Very few companies have these leading laser platforms - whether indium phosphide or gallium arsenide, we have all of that,” says Parthasarathi.

During OFC, II-VI also announced the sampling of a 100-gigabit directly modulated laser (DML) and detailed an optical channel monitoring platform.

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