Ayar Labs prepares for the era of co-packaged optics
Ayar Labs is readying its co-packaged optics technology for scaled production in the second half of 2020.
Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson
An important part of my career as a journalist was spent at the UK newspaper, Electronics Weekly.
The editor at the time was Richard Wilson. For several years I sat opposite him; despite having an office, Richard worked with us all. It was an exciting time to be covering the chip industry and we all worked hard. Richard was a wonderful boss and a great conversationalist.
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“A talented journalist and loved the complexities of the electronics industry but he had many interests and talents that were not given expression in that environment.”
I remember his joy the day after the Labour Party won the UK election in 1997 and he described how he had not slept watching the results come in (and the following day was a news day!)
He was a lovely, gentle man. I often wondered what he was doing at Electronics Weekly. He was a talented journalist and loved the complexities of the electronics industry but he had many interests and talents that were not given expression in that environment.
Electronics Weekly wasn’t always an easy workplace but I look back at those years and think it was the most vibrant place I’ve worked at. The place was filled with characters and Richard added to the pleasure of being there.
I think of Richard with huge fondness and am grateful to have known him. I last saw him in 2003 but despite the elapsed time, I feel his loss deeply.
A voyage around work
The first in a series looking at the experience of work in 2019.
Source: Mark Seery
To land your ideal job, the suggestion is first to find your passion. Indeed, one college in the US promises to guide its students to find their life purpose by teaching them three things: what they are good at, what they are passionate about, and what the world needs.
Assuming you are lucky enough to align all three elements, challenges are still likely. How do you maintain a work-life balance? And what happens over time when, despite having fulfilling, challenging work, part of your creative self remains untapped?
This has been the experience of Mark Seery (pictured below), who was a senior staff member at Juniper Networks, responsible for helping shape the networking company’s strategy.
Impetus for change
Seery first felt a murmuring for change in 2015 but only in 2018 did he act.
In 2015, he returned to Australia to spend time with his dying mother. Work commitments were such that his stay was limited. Seery’s mother died a week after he returned to the US and he travelled again to attend the funeral.
Last July he also visited Australia, this time to spend eight days with his brother who was celebrating a birthday. Again, because of work commitments, he felt he couldn’t spend too much time visiting yet the landmark birthday was something he felt he could not miss.
“The idea that work pressure would mentally impinge on even an eight-day stay made me realise my life was not well-balanced,” says Seery.
Just after the trip he informed his manager that he was resigning in order to take a sabbatical. A key motivation for the break was his desire to travel.
Seery chose to make a clean break rather than negotiate time off: “I didn't want to feel that there were any limitations as to what I could do on my sabbatical; I wanted to be free and see where that takes me.”
Source: Mark Seery
A leaving date was set for mid-October, his tenth anniversary at Juniper. “Ten years at Juniper seemed a significant milestone to me,” says Seery.
Since then, Seery has completed the first leg of his travel, visiting eight countries in Asia. And this month he is embarking on a second trip, visiting the Antarctic and Patagonia.
He has also set up his own business, to advise companies on finding their focus.
Career
As a child, Seery’s education was disrupted due to ill health. His first job, at 17, was in banking while at night he studied computer science. Seery credits his mother for encouraging him to pursue computing, a passion since childhood.
Seery’s first opportunity to move from traditional banking to IT involved joining the bank’s network operations. This included automatic teller machines, branch networks and data centre interconnect. “The network operations area, which reminded me of the Star Trek flight deck, drew me to choose network operations,” he says.
He progressed to network operations support, network design and systems programming.
His next step was to leave Australia for the US where he joined several Silicon Valley start-ups, pursuing such technologies as next-generation access, multi-protocol/ virtual routing and all-optical networking.
In 2002, Seery became an analyst, joining market research firm, RHK, that was subsequently acquired by Ovum. And it was while at RHK covering the switching and routing market that he was noticed by Juniper and enticed to join. Juniper’s routing group hired him as they felt he could help on some strategic issues.
From there, he expanded his strategic skills, joining the corporate strategy team where he undertook several roles. These included market intelligence, running CEO staff-level competitive war rooms and creating materials for quarterly company board meetings.
Seery’s role was to help give the company the data it needed to determine how best to meet its goals for the coming year. A company must determine what actions will have the most impact in meeting the targets and must budget in a way to give the best chance of meeting those goals.
“The real struggle in any strategy is how to get it executed,” says Seery. “And an important part of getting it executed is the right allocation of resources.”
Source: Mark Seery
Seery describes how different units in a company - the sales groups, product groups and the CFO office - all have their own views and agendas. The role of the strategy group is to be independent and provide analysis to help the decision makers plot the company’s course.
Corporate war-room work involved more tactical, shorter-term strategy, such as how to improve the performance of a specific business or a product.
Eventful years
Seery’s first years at Juniper were eventful ones. He joined soon after a new CEO who brought with him several senior staff, all from outside the industry. This required a lot of work preparing data and documents so that the company’s senior staff were all on the same page.
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“We all use the term value chain and we all have an idea about what it means. But it is only when you get your hands dirty trying to change the value chain that you really understand what it means.”
In 2009, the market hit a recession after the global financial crisis of 2008. And in 2011, it became clear that the European market was getting worse. Such economic disruptors required a lot of replanning.
It also became clear that the capital expenditure budgets of many of the service providers would no longer be growing and that the biggest part of their spending would go on the radio part of their networks. “The thing you did best is not going to grow anymore. What does that mean for the company?” says Seery.
Source: Mark Seery
And then there were new developments that occupied Seery as part of his business model strategy role.
One was the observation that software was becoming increasingly important, coupled with the huge disruption that is the cloud. Such developments had to be translated in terms of their significance for Juniper.
He also had to grapple with the idea - one affecting companies across many industries - that recurring revenue such as from subscriptions may benefit a company’s evaluation on Wall Street more than that of a company selling products only. Issues to be addressed here include how such a change would affect the company’s revenues, the operational changes required, the products Juniper should develop for such a model, and how to enable the sales force to sell such products.
“We all use the term value chain and we all have an idea about what it means,” says Seery. “But it is only when you get your hands dirty trying to change the value chain that you really understand what it means.”
The business model work was a big change for Seery, shifting him from a highly analytical role to one that involved engaging with many functions of the company.
His growing disquiet at Juniper wasn’t due to the stress of needing to continually produce deliverables, nor the demanding nature of his work. “It was more a feeling that I was missing out on something else,” he says.
Parting
Seery provides a multifaceted answer as to why he decided to resign.
First, his work on business modelling had been largely defined and was moving to the operational phase. It meant his day-to-day involvement was no longer required. This led him to question what he wanted to do next.
He also felt that, for a long time, part of him remained unfulfilled. “In a corporate context, there are certain expectations, the scope of things you talk about, the scope of things you express,” he says. “People in a corporate environment don't really care about some of the bigger issues you have as a human being.”
Companies focus on meeting targets each quarter and your life can become all-consuming to fulfil that ongoing short-term goal. The result, he says, is that a part of you gets pushed aside.
Source: Mark Seery
“You make a lot of sacrifices on things you are passionate about; things you enjoy,” says Seery. “If what you are passionate about is driving a business, then great, but not all of us are made that simply.”
Seery has spoken to people who have been more successful at managing their work-life balance. “Could I have have found a better balance in my ten years at Juniper? Maybe, but the fact is I didn't.”
It is these issues that led Seery to identify what was important to him and to focus on that.
Seery admits the decision to leave a secure and well-paid position at Juniper was extremely hard. But he says that he has a great appreciation and gratitude for the affluence he has already achieved, reinforced by his travel experiences.
One of the today's great challenges is ever-increasing consumption. The key is to step back and be grateful for what you already have, he says: “There is nothing wrong with striving for more, but craving for it and comparing yourself to others can be a trap.”
Travel
Travel is something Seery did repeatedly when he was younger but it inevitably dwindled with work and family commitments.
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“One young man in Myanmar told him that his fishing village didn’t have electricity till 2008 and didn’t have the internet till 2010”
For him, travel is a way to understand the human experience through other people’s stories. “I find when I travel, it has a real impact on me,” he says.
Seery worked with a travel company to plan his itinerary for the South East Asia trip, including having local guides in each town he visited.
“I had a structured itinerary with dates and places, though I had the ability to change what I wanted to do on any given day,” says Seery. “Having some structure and predictability is helpful when you have a family at home worrying about you.”
Source: Mark Seery
South East Asia
Seery had travelled via work to developed parts of Asia including China, Japan and South Korea. But travelling through less developed parts of Asia is a very different experience, he says.
He spoke to one young man while visiting Myanmar who told him that his fishing village didn't have electricity till 2008 and didn't have the internet till 2010.
Villagers continue to cook with fire rather than using an electric stove, claiming they don’t know how to use one, however, it could be that they can’t afford one, he says. They also use hay for one cooking effect and wood for another.
“The young man told me that the village had had no visibility into protests taking place in cities across the country until the advent of the internet. “They use Facebook, not Google, as a search engine, to see videos and get information about what is going on,” says Seery. “In the modern context, with everything that is going on with Facebook, we probably think that is somewhat scary.”
But the young man added he’d rather get on Facebook and talk to someone who lives in a city and ask them what is going on than trust what the Government tells him. “An interesting insight into why they view Facebook as a credible source of information,” says Seery.
Other examples of the impact of the internet include the way football is viewed. Before mobile data, villagers had to pay one villager that owned a huge satellite dish to watch an English Premier League match. Now they all watch on their phones.
Seery also highlights the ongoing tension between traditional life and modernity. He tells how when visiting rural villages in Laos one is struck by the poverty and lack of modern conveniences. It is easy to judge and wonder how they enjoy living there, he says, but they do.
However, the long-standing tradition of the elders sharing the history of the tribe and life stories around a campfire is changing. “Now, you get around the campfire and some kid with a cellphone is telling everybody what is going on in the rest of the world,” says Seery. “They are all very happy with how they are living until they find out how other people are living.”
Seery originally planned to be in Asia for a month but after talking with his wife and son who were about to oversee some home renovations, they all concluded that he should extend his trip. So he joined a tour group as part of the India and Nepal leg of his journey that extended the trip by several weeks.
What next?
The imminent trip to Antarctica will last 12 days with five days required to travel between Antarctica and Latin America. Once at the Antarctic, two nights will be spent camping on the ice, and there will be snowshoe walking. There are also Zodiac boats and options for kayaking and mountaineering.
In Patagonia, the trip will involve a three-day hike, an overnight horse-riding and camping trip, and several shorter hiking trips.
Seery’s new venture is a consultancy and research company called Bohcay. “It is a play on the photography term, Bokeh, the soft blurring you get behind a portrait,” says Seery.
The company’s aim is to help clients retain a systematic focus on what is important in terms of what they are doing, he says. Seery is in the process of closing his first customer for a short engagement.
“It is all part of exploring what I want to do after I finish my travel,” says Seery.
People that have met Seery since his return from his Asia trip comment on how he has lost weight and looks more relaxed. He is also exercising regularly, something that was only episodic during his time working.
He himself feels a weight has been lifted by no longer being burdened by the thought of sacrificing what he really wants to do.
“The more I travel, the more I will feel I have addressed that thing that was going on with me,” he says.
Further information
Bohcay website, click here
Mark Seery’s travel blog, click here
Kim Roberts: The 2019 John Tyndall Award winner
Roberts has been awarded the 2019 John Tyndall Award by The Optical Society (OSA) and the IEEE Photonics Society in recognition of his “pioneering contributions to the development of practical coherent communication systems”.
“It is well deserved,” says Seb Savory, who first knew Roberts when they both worked at Nortel and who is now an academic at the University of Cambridge working on joint projects with Ciena. Ciena acquired Nortel in 2010.
Kim Roberts of Ciena. On the wall are some of his 160 patents while on the screen is an image of a 32-point constellation produced by the WaveLogic Ai coherent modem. Source: Ciena.
“The best measure of Kim’s contributions and impact is the simple fact that the practical coherent optical communication systems that Kim pioneered are now the gold standard for high-capacity fiber-optic systems,” says Steve Alexander, Ciena’s CTO. “They have become the foundation of the fabric for how the world connects, having been deployed by nearly every large network operator on the planet.”
“Roberts was among the very first who introduced electronic signal processing in optical communications," says Professor Ioannis Tomkos at the Athens Information Technology Center (AIT). Initially, the signal processing was at the transmitter - electronic-based equalisation for pre-compensation in direct-detection systems - and then at the receiver. “Roberts’s ideas have made coherent detection practical and revolutionised the industry,” says Tomkos.
Meanwhile, his boss, Dino DiPerna, vice president, packet optical platforms R&D at Ciena, describes Roberts as having one of the most brilliant minds he has encountered.
Education
Roberts read electronic engineering with an emphasis on maths at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “I took courses and took extra courses to get all the requirements of an Honours maths degree,” says Roberts.
Why add maths to an already demanding degree? A recognition of the importance of having a firm grounding in maths for electronic engineering or simply a love of the subject? “It is fun,” says Roberts.
His exploration of maths is ongoing. Most Fridays, Roberts works from home where, after catching up with email, he studies maths. “It is not related directly to engineering, I just learn a new branch of mathematics,” says Roberts. The goal is to learn something new that may or may not help trigger ideas in the future. Overall, the practice has proved very fruitful, he says.
After his undergraduate studies, Roberts gained a fellowship to pursue a Masters degree in a neurological lab developing diagnostics tests for the disease, Multiple Sclerosis.
“Signals were measured on the brain and my task was to identify whether this was normal or abnormal, indicating Multiple Sclerosis,” he says. “I baked cinnamon buns to bribe my friends to come in and be the normals; I needed 25 normals.” His resulting system outperformed a neurologist looking at the same data.
Roberts finished his Masters in the winter of 1983-84. It was a period of recession and he had two job offers: one was to continue at the lab and the second was at Nortel.
“I went off to Nortel and learnt about optics,” says Roberts.
Career
Roberts has overseen several notable projects in his career, as highlighted in the press release announcing the 2019 John Tyndall Award.
These include Nortel’s Superdecoder, terrestrial optical amplifiers for 2.5- and 10-gigabit transmissions, bringing 10-gigabit optical transport to market including developing the first WaveLogic IC, and coherent-based optical transmission.
The Superdecoder was Nortel’s internal name for the application of signal processing to intensity-modulated signals received using a direct detection-based optical receiver.
There are three critical parameters involved with intensity-modulated direct detection (IMDD), says Roberts: the gain of the avalanche photo-detector, the phase of the clock making the decision, and the ‘slicing level’ - the sampling threshold - which may not necessarily be at 50 percent.
The detection circuitry includes the slicer and a flip-flop. The slicer determines if the received bit is a 1 or 0 that is then latched into the flip-flop at the appropriate time. “If it made an error, it made an error,” says Roberts. “In a 2.5-gigabit system there was no error correction, so that was a customer error.”
Nortel’s cleverness was to add two more slicers and flip-flops in parallel to the central channel decoding the actual data. These extra detector channels could have different sampling levels that were executed at different times. The Exclusive-OR logical operator was applied to each output of the extra channels with the central channel. If they differed, a ‘pseudo-error’ was called.
While pseudo, such errors add value in that they help identify where the centre of the eye diagram is to optimise the actual data detection.
“You want it [the detection] at the optimum time and voltage,” says Roberts. “You try to reduce the number of errors to get the optimum positioning of the data channel by doing high-speed measurements in parallel.”
The project came about after a former boss took an internal course on gallium arsenide (GaAs) circuits and chose this as his course project.
“The two of us designed the GaAs circuit and I then went on to do the mathematics of how do we use this idea,” says Roberts. “It went from a course project into what we do in all our IMDD receivers.”
Optical amplifiers and 10 gigabit
Roberts led the Nortel team that developed terrestrial optical amplifiers. “Optical amplifiers had been used for transatlantic links and we developed optical amplifiers to go 2.5 gigabit and 10 gigabit,” says Roberts.
The challenges included the physics, which was new, and determining how to make optical amplification into a product that customers could engineer, install and manage.
Roberts also managed the team that did the science and the prototypes that eventually became Nortel's 10-gigabit product that started shipping in 1995.
“He was one of the big forces behind getting to 10 gigabit [optical transport],” says Savory. “Nortel was the one that went to 10 gigabit when others were saying you couldn’t do 10 gigabit.”
Pre-compensation & the WaveLogic chip
In the early 2000s, Roberts started working on what became Nortel’s first WaveLogic IC. Here, electronics was used as an aid to counteract optical transmission impairments.
"He developed digital signal processing schemes for pre-distorting the signals at the transmitter, with the goal to compensate for transceiver imperfections and chromatic dispersion-induced distortions as the optical signal pulses are propagating over the transmission fibre,” says Tomkos. “Signal pre-distortion and chromatic dispersion effects on the propagating optical pulses counteract each other as they travel along the fibre so that an almost clean signal is detected at the receiver.”
“There was a realisation by our team that if we modulate the complex electrical field - not just turn the light on and off - then we could compensate anything we wanted to before we transmitted,” says Roberts. “We could do digital linear filtering for the chromatic dispersion that was going to be on the line.”
Using an IC at the transmitter meant the receiver circuitry didn’t need to change. It also meant that electronics could replace the spools of chromatic dispersion-compensation fibre that was, at the time, the solution used. Such fibre spools were costly and added optical loss.
According to Tomkos, Nortel only went public about its pre-distortion technique once similar ideas were published in a paper by an academic.
“I started going around the world preaching a new gospel that dispersion is your friend, dispersion is good,” says Roberts. “That we can fix enormous amounts of dispersion and that the dispersion helps to smear out nonlinearities.”
However, the claim was met with skepticism. The issue, says Tomkos, was the nature of the distorted transmitted pulses: they had a very high peak-to-average power ratio. “When you send very high power signals, it generates non-linear effects,” says Tomkos. Nortel’s competitors claimed the technique wouldn't work and it had no future.
“It took a few years of preaching for the community to become believers,” says Roberts.
Developing the pre-distortion chip - what became the first WaveLogic device - subsequently led to Nortel’s development of the coherent optical receiver.
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“I like to build things and electronic engineering gives you the tools to be able to take your ideas and build them”
Coherent receiver
The critical circuit within the WaveLogic IC was its high-speed digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) implemented in CMOS. The overall bit rate was 10.7 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) such that the DAC operated at twice the rate - over 21 gigasamples-per-second - to satisfy the Nyquist sampling theory.
“Once we realised we could build these, we realised we could build the analogue-to-digital converter that could run just as fast and we could build [a] digital coherent [system],” says Roberts. Until then, most of the work had looked at analogue optical coherent which Roberts describes as very hard.
“Four of us in a room sketched through on a whiteboard the pieces we needed and we concluded we could build it,” says Roberts.
“It was the same bet-your-houses philosophy with the move to coherent [that was used by Nortel for 10 gigabit],” says Savory. “Kim was very much leading the team that put together the coherent receiver.”
People thought coherent was a nice idea but that it would never happen, says Savory, the issue being the effort required to develop the coherent digital signal processor (DSP).
The coherent receiver - the optics and the coherent DSP - not only solved the problem of chromatic dispersion but also overcame the issue of polarisation mode dispersion which, at the time, was a barrier to achieving faster optical transmission speeds of 40Gbps and higher.
By handling the enormous amounts of polarisation mode dispersion, the coherent receiver could work anywhere a 10-gigabit wavelength would work, says Roberts: “You just plugged us in; it made it very easy for customers to deploy.” And that led to coherent’s commercial success.
Savory mentions how Nortel’s coherent receiver work was submitted as a post-deadline paper at an ECOC conference and was rejected. “I remember chatting to Kim afterwards who, like me, was despondent given the technological breakthrough this represented,” says Savory.
He encouraged Roberts to submit the work to the OSA’s Optical Express journal, where it was subsequently published in 2008 with Roberts as the senior author. “It is now seen as one of the key papers,” says Savory.
Since then, a total of four generations of WaveLogic devices have been announced, the latest being Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai. Indeed, Roberts’ job title is Vice President of WaveLogic Science.
It was my last meeting on the final day of the OFC 2010 show. I was being showcased Nortel’s first 100-gigabit coherent system in a private room reserved for prospective customers. It was also the week that Ciena closed the acquisition of Nortel.
I was talked through the various components of the system. The spectrum analyser display was also explained - the system used two tones per channel, each carrying 50-gigabits of data - while on a whiteboard, constellation points and modulation schemes were drawn to explain the theory.
Despite being exhausted after a long week and poor sleep due to the time zone difference, I left the room feeling energised and elated. I had witnessed the most impressive technological display just as the show was winding down. The 100-gigabit coherent platform had also been explained to me by a patient and clearly authoritative Nortel engineer.
That was my first encounter with Kim Roberts. (Editor, Gazettabyte.)
Talents
Savory describes Roberts as a conceptualiser: “You get some people that can do the maths but don’t have the conceptual understanding.” Roberts can do both. “He is also a prolific inventor,” adds Savory: Roberts has 160 patents.
Roger Carroll, Ciena’s vice president, optical modem development, explains how Roberts can span from the theory down to the gate level of chip design. “That type of person is extremely rare,” says Carroll.
Ciena's DiPerna highlights another talent of Roberts: he is an unconventional thinker. “When you are creating, it is easy to get wrapped up in, 'Well, we can’t do that because of so and so',” says DiPerna. “Many brilliant, experienced people can fall into that trap and miss a chance to change the game.”
An example both DiPerna and Carroll cite was the development of WaveLogic 3 where Ciena first included soft-decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) and signal processing at the transmitter.
“The mathematics [of SD-FEC] had been around for a while but its implementation in a chip, at that time, that was magic,” says Carroll. “It had to fit in something that was manufacturable and with a reasonable power [consumption].”
At the time, other companies were getting 100-gigabit coherent to market using conventional hard-decision FEC while the WaveLogic 3 incorporate SD-FEC and signal processing at the transmitter.
“There was a lot of pressure at the time,” explains Carroll. “We stuck to our guns, Kim stuck to his guns and the chip helped pull us ahead in the coherent game.”
Kim Roberts and an example of his furniture making. "Squeezing more traffic through the cable: Maple, Cherry and stainless steel," he says. Source: Kim Roberts.
Work practices and leadership skills
The way Roberts works is something he has practiced throughout the development of the WaveLogic ICs.
A colleague will come into his office and the two will spend an hour or two arguing in front of the whiteboard. “Then, they [the colleague] will take a cell phone picture of the two big whiteboards and will go away and write out the maths proofs, or do a MATLAB simulation, or both,” says Roberts. “Meanwhile, someone else has come in with a different problem and we will go off in another direction and work through that.”
DiPerna says over the years he has been told how important Roberts is and asked what he was doing to keep Roberts excited.
First, he points out the working relationship he, Carroll and Roberts share, having all worked together for over 30 years. Second, DiPerna has made sure that Roberts is surrounded with top talent in the various teams he interacts with, such as Ciena’s analogue, opto, digital and ASIC teams.
“That is what turns Kim’s crank because he sees his ideas can come to life through that iterative process with the teams,” says DiPerna.
Career choice
If Roberts were to start university today, would he still choose electronic engineering?
“I would,” he says. “There are other opportunities but I like to build things and electronic engineering gives you the tools to be able to take your ideas and build them.”
Roberts says his son has also chosen this path, having just completed a PhD in electronic engineering dealing with the optimisation of optical networks in the face of optical non-linearities. “Not much imagination there to move very far away,” quips Roberts.
Roberts’ practical nature extends to making furniture (see image). His creations have appeared as part of his presentations, props that he uses to explain the physics, says DiPerna: “It is all part of the gawky character we love so dearly.
“The guy is a brother to us,” concludes DiPerna. “We are absolutely thrilled for him with this award; it is incredibly deserving.”
Access drives a need for 10G compact aggregation boxes
Infinera has unveiled a platform to aggregate multiple 10-gigabit traffic streams originating in the access network.
The 1.6-terabit HDEA 1600G platform is designed to aggregate 80, 10-gigabit wavelengths. The use of ten-gigabit wavelengths in access continues to grow with the advent of 5G mobile backhaul and developments in cable and passive optical networking (PON).
A distributed access architecture being embraced by cable operators. Shown are the remote PHY devices (RPD) or remote MAC-PHY devices (RMD), functionality moved out of the secondary hub and closer to the end user. Also shown is how DWDM technology is moved closer to the edge of the network. Source: Infinera.
A distributed access architecture being embraced by cable operators. Shown are the remote PHY devices (RPD) or remote MAC-PHY devices (RMD), functionality moved out of the secondary hub and closer to the end user. Also shown is how DWDM technology is moved closer to the edge of the network. Source: Infinera.
Infinera has adopted a novel mechanical design for its 1 rack unit (1RU) HDEA 1600G that uses the sides of the platform to fit 80 SFP+ optical modules.
The platform also features a 1.6-terabit Ethernet switch chip that aggregates the traffic from the 10-gigabit streams to fill 100-gigabit wavelengths that are passed to other switching or transport platforms for transmission into the network.
Distributed access architecture
Jon Baldry, metro marketing director at Infinera, cites the adoption of a distributed access architecture (DAA) by cable operators as an example of 10-gigabit links that are set to proliferate in the access network.
DAA is being adopted by cable operators to compete with the telecom operators’ rollout of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband access technology.
A recent report by market research firm, Ovum, addressing DAA in the North American market, discusses how the architectural approach will free up space in cable headends, reduce the operators’ operational costs, and allow the delivery of greater bandwidth to subscribers.
Implementing DAA involves bringing fibre as well as cable network functionality closer to the user. Such functionality includes remote PHY devices and remote MAC-PHY devices. It is these devices that will use a 10-gigabit interface, says Baldry: “The traffic they will be running at first will be two or three gigabits over that 10-gigabit link.”
Julie Kunstler, principal analyst at Ovum’s Network Infrastructure and Software group, says the choice whether to deploy a remote PHY or a remote MAC-PHY architecture is a issue of an operator's ‘religion’. What is important, she says, is that both options exploit the existing hybrid fibre coax (HFC) architecture to boost the speed tiers delivered to users.
The current, pre-DAA, cable network architecture. Source: Infinera.
In the current pre-DAA architecture, the cable network comprises cable headends and secondary distribution hubs (see diagram above). It is at the secondary hub that the dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network terminates. From there, RF over fibre is carried over the hybrid fibre-coax (HFC) plant. The HFC plant also requires amplifier chains to overcome cable attenuation and the losses resulting from the cable splits that deliver the RF signals to the homes.
Typically, an HFC node in the cable network serves up to 500 homes. With the adoption of DAA and the use of remote PHYs, the amplifier chains can be removed with each PHY serving 50 homes (see diagram top).
“Basically DWDM is being pushed out to the remote PHY devices,” says Baldry. The remote PHYs can be as far as 60km from the secondary hub.
“DAA is a classic example where you will have dense 10-gigabit links all coming together at one location,” says Baldry. “Worst case, you can have 600-700 remote PHY devices terminating at a secondary hub.”
The same applies to cellular.
At present 4G networks use 1-gigabit links for mobile backhaul but 5G will use 10-gigabit and 25-gigabit links in a year or two. “So the edge of the WDM network has really jumped from 1 gigabit to 10 gigabit,” says Baldry.
It is the aggregation of large numbers of 10-gigabit links that the HDEA 1600G platform is designed to address.
HDEA 1600G
Only a certain number of pluggable interfaces can fit on the front panel of a 1RH box. To accommodate 80, 10-gigabit streams, the two sides of the platform are used for the interfaces. Using the HDEA’s sides creates much more space for the 1RU’s input-output (I/O) compared to traditional transport kit, says Baldry.
The 40 SFP+ modules on each side of the platform are accessed by pulling the shelf out and this can be done while it is operational (see photo below). Such an approach is used for supercomputing but Baldry believes Infinera is the first to adopt it for a transport product.
Infinera has also adopted MPO connectors to simplify the fibre management involved in connected 80 SFP+, each module requiring a fibre pair.
The HDEA 1600 has two groups of four MPO connectors on the front panel. Each MPO cluster connects 40 modules on each side, with each MPO cable having 20 fibres to connect 10 SFP+ modules.
A site terminating 400 remote PHYs, for example, requires the connection of 40 MPO cables instead of 800 individual fibres, says Baldry, simplifying installation greatly.
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“DAA is a classic example where you will have dense 10-gigabit links all coming together at one location. Worst case, you can have 600-700 remote PHY devices terminating at a secondary hub.”
The other end of the MPO cable connects to a dense multiplexer-demultiplexer (mux-demux) unit that separates the individual 10-gigabit access wavelengths received over the DWDM link.
Each mux-demux unit uses an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) that is tailored to the cable operators’ wavelengths needs. The 24-channel mux-demux design supports 20, 100GHz-wide channels for the 10-gigabit wavelengths and four wavelengths reserved for business services. Business services have become an important part of the cable operators’ revenues.
Infinera says the HDEA platform supports the extended C-band for a total of 96 wavelengths.
The company says it will develop different AWG configurations tailored for the wavelengths and channel count required for the different access applications.
In the rack, the HDEA aggregation platform takes up one shelf, while eight mux-demux units take up another 1RU. Space is left in between to house the cabling between the two.
The HDEA 1600G pulled out of the rack, showing the MPO connectors and the space to house the cabling between the HDEA and the rack of compact AWGs. Source: Infinera.
Baldry points out that the four business service wavelengths are not touched by the HDEA platform, Rather, these are routed to separate Ethernet switches dedicated to business customers. "We break those wavelengths out and hand them over to whatever system the operator is using," he says.
The HDEA 1600G also features eight 100-gigabit line-side interfaces that carry the aggregated cable access streams. Infinera is not revealing the supplier of the 1.6 terabit switch silicon - 800-gigabit for client-side capacity and 800-gigabit for line-side capacity - it is using for the HDEA platform.
The platform supports all the software Infinera uses for its EMXP, a packet-optical switch tailored for access and aggregation that is part of Infinera’s XTM family of products. Features include multi-chassis link aggregation group (MC-LAG), ring protection, all the Metro Ethernet Forum services, and synchronisation for mobile networks, says Baldry
Auto-Lambda
Infinera has developed what it calls its Auto-Lambda technology to simplify the wavelength management of the remote PHY devices.
Here, the optics set up the connection instead of a field engineer using a spreadsheet to determine which wavelength to use for a particular remote PHY. Tunable SFP+ modules can be used at the remote PHY devices only with fixed-wavelength (grey) SFP+ modules used by the HDEA platform to save on costs, or both ends can use tunable optics. Using tunable SFP+ modules at each end may be more expensive but the operator gains flexibility and sparing benefits.
Jon Baldry
Establishing a link when using fixed optics within the HDEA platform, the SFP+ is operated in a listening mode only. When a tunable SFP+ transceiver is plugged in at a remote PHY, which could be days later, it cycles through each wavelength. The blocking nature of the AWG means that such cycling does not disturb other wavelengths already in use.
Once the tunable SFP+ reaches the required wavelength, the transmitted signal is passed through the AWG to reach the listening transceiver at the switch. On receipt of the signal, the switch SFP+ turns on its transmitter and talks to the remote transceiver to establish the link.
For the four business wavelengths, both ends of the link use auto-tunable SFP+ modules, what is referred to a duel-ended solution. That is because both end-point systems may not be Infinera platforms and may have no knowledge as to how to manage WDM wavelengths, says Baldry.
In this more complex scenario, the time taken to establish a link is theoretically much longer. The remote end module has to cycle through all the wavelengths and if no connection is made, the near end transceiver changes its transmit wavelength and the remote end’s wavelength cycling is repeated.
Given that a sweep can take two minutes or more, an 80-wavelength system could take close to three hours in the worst case to establish the link; an unacceptable delay.
Infinera is not detailing how its duel-ended scheme works but a combination of scanning and communications is used between the two ends. Infinera had shown such a duel-ended scheme set up a link in 4 minutes and believes it can halve that time.
Finisar detailed its own Flextune fast-tuning technology at ECOC 2018. However, Infinera stresses its technology is different.
Infinera says it is talking to several pluggable optical module makers. “They are working on 25-gigabit optics which we are going to need for 5G,” says Baldry. “As soon as they come along, with the same firmware, we then have auto-tunable for 5G.”
System benefits
Infinera says its HDEA design delivers several benefits. Using the sides of the box means that the platform supports 80 SFP+ interfaces, twice the capacity of competing designs. In turn, using MPO connectors simplifies the fibre management, benefiting operational costs.
Infinera also believes that the platform’s overall power consumption has a competitive edge. Baldry says Infinera incorporates only the features and hardware needed. “We have deliberately not done a lot of stuff in Layer 2 to get better transport performance,” he says. The result is a more power-efficient and lower latency design. The lower latency is achieved using ‘thin buffers’ as part of the switch’s output-buffered queueing architecture, he says.
The platform supports open application programming interfaces (APIs) such that cable operators can make use of such open framework developments as the Cloud-Optimised Remote Datacentre (CORD) initiative being developed by the Open Networking Foundation. CORD uses open-source software-defined networking (SDN) technology such as ONOS and the OpenFlow protocol to control the box.
An operator can also choose to use Infinera’s Digital Network Administrator (DNA) management software, SDN controller, and orchestration software that it has gained following the Coriant acquisition.
The HDEA 1600G is generally available and in the hands of several customers.
Books in 2018 - Part 3
More books read in 2018, as recommended by Steve Alexander and Yves LeMaitre.
Steve Alexander, senior vice president and CTO, Ciena
I was standing in line at a Starbucks and was chatting with another person who asked what all these engineers were doing talking about networks of submarines. In fact, it was a nearby conference on submarine cables. The person said: “I thought that’s what satellites were for”.
I wanted to find a book I could point people to who think that satellites carry most of the international traffic when, in fact, it is the fibre-optic submarine cables that carry the vast majority of the world’s communications. I came up with The Undersea Network by Nicole Starosielski.
Our industry does such a good job at this that most people don’t even know such networks exist. It is like air; it is there and it works.
My youngest son read The Martian by Andy Weir after seeing the movie and he thought it was pretty good. I’ve always been a Sci-Fi fan but haven’t read much lately so it was nice to get back into it.
Yves LeMaitre, chief strategy officer at Lumentum
I am afraid I am guilty of spending far too much time streaming shows and sports to my laptop. The good thing is my TV stays off. However, I did manage to read several books this year. The three I would highlight - all non-fiction - have a focus on US history.
The first, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, is about the presidency and assassination of James Garfield intertwined with several of the scientific inventions of the times.
Another title by Candice Millard that I recommend is The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey that details his exploration of the Amazon.
My third recommendation, The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson, tells the story of the Chicago’s World Fair of 1893 combined with a serial killer story.
Reading about what are still relatively recent events highlights how much the world has changed in the last century while people’s aspirations and desires have not.
The life stories and achievements of Theodore Roosevelt, James Garfield and Daniel Burnham, the architect of the Chicago World’s Fair, should challenge us to expect more from our leadership, whether in the political, business or social arenas. We have become complacent in accepting mediocrity and lowering our standards.
Reading these stories should remind us that true leadership exists and is a rare quality that should be appreciated and recognised.
Acacia eyes pluggables as it demos its AC1200 module
The emerging market opportunity for pluggable coherent modules is causing companies to change their strategies.
Ciena is developing and plans to sell its own coherent modules. And now Acacia Communications, the coherent technology specialist, says it is considering changing its near-term coherent digital signal processor (DSP) roadmap to focus on coherent pluggables for data centre interconnect and metro applications.
Source: Gazettabyte
DSP roadmap
Acacia’s coherent DSP roadmap in recent years has alternated between an ASIC for low-power, shorter-reach applications followed by a DSP to address more demanding, long-haul applications.
In 2014, Acacia announced its Sky 100-gigabit DSP for metro applications that was followed in 2015 by its Denali dual-core DSP that powers its 400-gigabit AC-400 5x7-inch module. Then, in 2016, Acacia unveiled its low-power Meru, used within its pluggable CFP2-DCO modules. The high-end 1.2-terabit dual-core Pico DSP used for Acacia’s board-mounted AC1200 coherent module was unveiled in 2017.
“The 400ZR is our next focus,” says Tom Williams, senior director of marketing at Acacia.
The 400ZR standard, promoted by the large internet content providers, is being developed to link switches in separate data centres up to 80km apart. Acacia’s subsequent coherent DSP that follows the 400ZR may also target pluggable applications such as 400-gigabit CFP2-DCO modules that will span metro and metro-regional distances.
“There is a trend to pluggable, not just the 400ZR but the CFP2-DCO [400-gigabit] for metro,” says Williams. “We are still evaluating whether that causes a shift in our overall cadence and DSP development.”
AC1200 trials
Meanwhile, Acacia has announced the results of two transatlantic trials involving its AC1200 module whose production is now ramping.
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“There is a trend to pluggable, not just the 400ZR but the CFP2-DCO [400-gigabit] for metro”
In the first trial, Acacia, working with ADVA, transmitted a 300-gigabit signal over a 6,800km submarine cable. The 300-gigabit wavelength occupied a 70GHz channel and used ADVA’s Teraflex technology, part of ADVA’s FSP 3000 CloudConnect platform. Teraflex is a one-rack-unit (1RU) stackable chassis that supports three hot-pluggable 1.2-terabit sleds, each sled incorporating an Acacia AC1200 module.
In a separate trial, the AC1200 was used to send a 400-gigabit signal over 6,600km using the Marea submarine cable. Marea is a joint project between Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius that links the US and Spain. The cable is designed for performance and uses an open line system, says Williams: “It is not tailored to a particular company’s [transport] solution”.
The AC1200 module - 40 percent smaller than the 5x7-inch AC400 module - uses Acacia’s patented Fractional QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology. The technology uses probabilistic constellation shaping that allows for non-integer constellations. “Instead of 3 or 4 bits-per-symbol, you can have 3.56 bits-per-symbol,” says Williams.
Acacia’s Fractional QAM also uses an adaptive baud rate. For the trial, the 400-gigabit wavelength was sent using the maximum baud rate of just under 70 gigabaud. Using the baud rate to the full allows a lower constellation to be used for the 400-gigabit wavelength thereby achieving the best optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and hence reach.
In a second demonstration using the Marea cable, Acacia demonstrated a smaller-width channel in order to maximise the overall capacity sent down the fibre. Here, a lower baud rate/ higher constellation combination was used to achieve a spectral efficiency of 6.41 bits-per-second-per-Hertz (b/s/Hz). “If you built out all the channels [on the fibre], you achieve of the order of 27 terabits,” says Williams.
Pluggable coherent
The 400ZR will be implemented using the same OSFP and QSFP-DD pluggable modules used for 400-gigabit client-side interfaces. This is why an advanced 7nm CMOS process is needed to implement the 400ZR DSP so that its power consumption will be sufficiently low to meet the modules’ power envelopes when integrated with Acacia’s silicon-photonics optics.
There is also industry talk of a ZR+, a pluggable module with a reach exceeding80km. “At ECOC, there was more talk about the ZR+,” says Williams. “We will see if it becomes standardised or just additional proprietary performance.”
Another development is the 400-gigabit CFP2-DCO. At present, the CFP2-DCO delivers up to 200-gigabitwavelengths but the standard, as defined by the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), also supports 400 gigabits.
Williams says that there a greater urgency to develop the 400ZR than the 400-gigabit CFP2-DCO. “People would like to ramp the ZR pretty close to the timing of the 400-gigabit client-side interfaces,” says Williams. And that is likely to be from mid-2019.
In contrast, the 400-gigabit CFP2-DCO pluggable while wanted by carriers for metro applications, is not locked to any other infrastructure build-out, says Williams.
Interview: Finisar’s CEO reflects on a notable year
Michael Hurlston has had an eventful 2018.
The year started with him replacing Finisar’s veteran CEO, Jerry Rawls, and it is now ending with Finisar being acquired by the firm II-VI for $3.2 billion.
Finisar is Hurlston’s first experience in the optical component industry, having spent his career in semiconductors. One year in and he already has strong views about the industry and its direction.
Michael Hurlston
“We have seen in the semiconductor industry a period of massive consolidation in the last three to four years,” says Hurlston, in his first interview sinced the deal was announced. “I think it is not that different in optics: scales matters.”
Hurlston says that, right from the start, he recognised the need to drive industry consolidation. “We had started thinking about that fairly deeply at the time the Lumentum-Oclaro acquisition was announced and that gave us more impetus to look at this,” says Hurlston. The result was revealed in November with the announced acquisition of Finisar by II-VI.
“Finisar considered so many deals in the past but could not converge on a solution,” says Vladimir Kozlov, CEO and founder of market research firm, LightCounting. "It needed a new CEO to bring a different perspective. The new II-VI will look more like many diversified semiconductor vendors, addressing multiple markets: automotive, industrial and communications."
“We really have two complementary companies for the most part,” says Hurlston, who highlights VCSELs and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) as the only product segments where there is overlap. Merging II-VI and Finisar with disparate portfolios further benefits scale, he says.
Chip background
Hurlston’s semiconductor experience was gained at Broadcom and involved Wi-Fi devices. The key lessons he learned there is the importance of offering differentiated products to customers and the need to expand into new application areas.
“Wi-Fi is a standard, a technology, that has rules as you have to interoperate between different chipsets and different producers,” says Hurlston. “But we did find ways to differentiate under a standards umbrella.”
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“It turns out co-packaging is a great top-line opportunity for optics companies because eventually we will be tasked with pulling together that sub-system”
What he has found, to his surprise, is that it is harder to differentiate in the optical components industry. “What we are trying to do is find spots where we can offer differentiation,” says Hurlston.
Optical components usage needs to also expand into new segments, he says, just as Wi-Fi evolved from a PC-centric technology to home networking and ultimately mobile handsets.
Hurlston cites as an example in the optical components industry how VCSELs are now being used for 3D sensing in handsets. There are also emerging opportunities in automotive and the data centre.
For the automative market, applications include in-cabin sensing to assist drivers and LIDAR (laser detection and ranging) to help vehicles build up an image of their surroundings in real-time. “LIDAR is further out but it is a significant opportunity,” says Hurlston.
For data centres, a key opportunity silicon co-packaging: bringing optics closer to switch silicon.
Currently, switch platform use pluggable optical modules on the faceplate to send and receive data. But with switch silicon capacity doubling every two years, the speed and density of the input-output means optics will have to get closer to the switch silicon.
On-board optics - as promoted by the Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) - is one option. Another is co-packaged optics, where the optics and silicon are placed in the same package.
“It turns out co-packaging is a great top-line opportunity for optics companies because eventually we will be tasked with pulling together that sub-system,” says Hurlston. “The integration of the switch chip and optics is something that will be technically difficult and necessitate differentiation.”
Challenges
As well as the issue of acquisitions, another area Hurlston has tackled in his short tenure is Finisar’s manufacturing model and how it can be improved.
“Finisar is a technology company at heart but the life-blood of the company is manufacturing,” he says.
Manufacturing is also one area where there is a notable difference between chips and optics. “There are manufacturing complexities with semiconductors and semiconductor process but optics takes it to a whole different level,” he says.
This is due to the manufacturing complexity of optical transceiver which Finisar’s CEO likens to manufacturing a mobile phone. There are chips that need a printed circuit board onto which are also added optical subassemblies housing such components as lasers and photo-detectors.
“Part of it [the complexity] is the human labour - the human touch - that is involved in the manufacturing and assembling of these transceivers ” he says. Finisar says its laser fab employs several hundred people whereas its optical transceiver factories employ thousands: 5,000 staff in Malaysia and some 5,500 in China.
“Our manufacturing model has been where I’ve spent a lot of time,” says Hurston. Some efficiencies have been gained but not nearly as much as he initially hoped.
Consolidation
One of the issues that has hindered greater industry consolidation has been the need for synergy between companies. A semiconductor company will only acquire or merge with another semiconductor company, and the same with a laser company looking for another laser player, he says. “What I admire about II-VI is that they are pretty bold,” says Hurlston. “What II-VI did is go after something that is not overlapping.”
He believes the creation of such broad-based suppliers is something the optics industry will have to do more of: “The transceiver guys are going to have to go after different areas of the value chain.”
In most mature industries, three large diversified companies typically dominate the marketplace. Given Lumentum’s acquisition of Oclaro has just closed and II-VI’s acquisition of Finisar is due to be completed in mid-2019, will there be another large deal?
“This is a big industry and the opportunity today and going forward is big,” says Hurlston. But there are so many players in different parts of the supply chain such that he is unsure whether these niche companies will survive in the long run.
“Whether there will be three, four or five large players, I don’t know,” he says. “But we are definitely going to see fewer; this [II-VI - Finisar deal] isn't the last transaction that drives industry consolidation.”
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“Whether there will be three, four or five large players, I don’t know but we are definitely going to see fewer”
How will Finisar make optical transceivers in such a competitive marketplace, that includes an increasing number of Chinese entrants, while delivering gross margins that meet Wall Street expectations?
Finisar does have certain advantages, he says, such as making its own lasers. “We also make our own semiconductors, a lot of the semiconductor solutions the Chinese guys have are sourced,” he says. “That gives us an inherent advantage.”
Having its own manufacturing facilities in the Far East means that Chinese players have no inherent manufacturing advantage there. However, he admits that the gross margin expected of Finisar is higher that its Chinese competitors.
This is why Finisar’s CEO stresses the need to pursue pockets of differentiation and why the company has to be first to market in important productareas that all players will target. “We historically have not been first to market,” he says. “We have made adjustments in the last year in our time-to-market and our ability to get to big products transitions that will be hyper-competitive first.”
Hurston expresses some satisfaction in the improved revenues and gross margins as reported in Finisar’s last two quarters’ results, albeit these quarters coming after what he calls ‘a low base’.
“We have also made significant progress in 3D sensing that has been a big challenge for us,” he says.
What next?
Hurlston says he hopes to have a role in the new company once the deal closes.
“But If I don’t, I’ve really enjoyed working with the [Finisar] team and in this space,” he says. “It’s been a bit of a learning curve but I’ve learnt a couple of tricks. Hopefully there will be another opportunity to apply some of that learning to a job elsewhere.”
Books in 2018 - Part 2
Some more books consumed in 2018, as recommended by Maxim Kuschnerov and Andrew Schmitt.
Maxim Kuschnerov, senior R&D manager at Huawei.
It is hard to believe the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff was published in 2018. Judging by what has happened since Trump’s inauguration, this recollection of his first days in the White House seems outdated. But it was fun to read while the memory of the election was still fresh. It is hard to judge whether all the book’s sources are truthful but the main message is certainly not too far off.
John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup deals with the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her infamous blood testing start-up, Theranos. If it wasn’t for the fact that Holmes endangered the lives of thousands of people with her erroneous tests, one could be almost amazed on how she secured $1 billion from investors based on absolutely no technology whatsoever. It is also hard to believe how big chains could go along deploying Theranos tests without qualification of the products or the necessary Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
As a westerner working for Huawei, Henry Kissinger’s On China was an important read to understand better how China sees itself and the world. There is no other nation capable of looking decades ahead like it is the fourth quarter of the next financial year. This is a worthwhile book for anyone wanting to make sense of the world.
Being a huge poker fan, buying the book Poker Brat: Phil Hellmuth’s Autobiography was a no-brainer. Hellmuth has his place in poker history, being one of the youngest World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event winners and the record holder with 15 bracelets. However, the book offers little insight on poker strategy. Or maybe it is the lack of strategy which makes Hellmuth who he is. If someone is really interested in learning from a great poker player, I’d recommend Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen. Hansen may have lost more than $20 million in online playing, but his book offers a better view on poker strategy back in the day of the big poker boom, before German maths wizards and game theory optimal strategy rewrote poker rules once again.
If a book has already been turned into a movie starring Brad Pitt, it means I am very late to the party with Michael Lewis’s Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. But being an artificial intelligence and machine-learning aficionado, everything is about recognising the underlying patterns, whether it is in images, optical signals or in such a beautiful and simple game like baseball. Most likely baseball strategists already apply machine learning to further optimise their strategy.
Andrew Schmitt, Founder and directing analyst at Cignal AI
The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb by Neal Bascomb is my pick of the year. I can’t believe this story isn't already a movie. It is about the Allies’ attempt to destroy the heavy-water plant in German-occupied Norway that was critical to the development of a German Atomic Weapon. Norwegians in exile in the UK, working with locals, pulled off a stunning attack that crippled the plant and set back the German effort. But the book is mostly about the events leading up to the mission, as well as the escape afterwards. The men who pulled it off were as hardcore as they come, and the sacrifices and impossible decisions they faced need to be shared. It is a story I imagine most Norwegians know, and it is a story that should be told to the world.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance is a good autobiography of someone who managed to escape people and situations that could easily have misdirected him. I am not going to join the chorus of folks who point to this book as reasoning for Trump getting elected; I avoid political discussions at all costs in a work environment. But reading this makes you appreciate the positive advantages you may have had growing up. The author, on the surface, had none but he highlights the people and situations that were formative for him and how they guided him on the right path. The best part about the book is that it isn’t preachy and Vance goes out of his way to explain that the problems he avoided have no easy or clear solutions.
Ray Dalio’s whitepapers, essays and explainer videos have always impressed me with concise formats and clear ideas. However, his book, Principles: Life and Work, is a big meal that I didn’t finish. I would recommend his YouTube videos and whitepapers and unless you are a hardcore self-help reader, which I’m not, then skip this.
My son had to read War by Sebastian Junger over the summer for High School. We read it together; a highly recommended thing to do with your teenagers. Junger was embedded in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan with the US Army and was in the thick of some of the worst fighting. He also wrote The Perfect Storm which was a great book (and a terrible movie). In this book, he brings you right in the midst of events. If you want to know what being at the sharp end in Afghanistan is like, and the physical and mental sacrifices soldiers are making, then read this.
Michael Lewis is one of my favourite authors so I had to read his latest book, The Fifth Risk. It is well-written but it is about politics. I’m tired of politics. I don't think we need more of it so I won't recommend it.
I ripped through two volumes of Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries on the way back from China. It’s about a security robot that figures out how to disable its governor software and become self-aware. A killing machine with a conscience, struggling with the details of being human. Some of the best Sci-Fi I’ve read in a long time. Netflix or Amazon need to give their money to this author right now and turn it into a series.
Books in 2018
Gazettabyte has asked various industry executives to discuss the books they have read in 2018. Here, Valery Tolstikhin and Alexandra Wright-Gladstein give their recommendations.
Valery Tolstikhin, president and CEO of Intengent, a consultancy
I read too many technical and business texts during the day so I leave my bedtime for more human reading.
Valery Tolstikhin
This year I wasn’t too lucky with fiction books but I did read some great non-fiction ones: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.
All three titles are bestsellers and do not need an introduction, but still.
Harari’s book - the second in the series, and there is a third already published - encourages you to think of the big issues by detaching yourself from everyday routines and trivia.
Peterson’s book is about how to make yourself comfortable with these very routines and trivia while remaining at peace with the big issues. The book is also music to the ears of conservatives.
Isaacson’s book is as much about Leonardo da Vinci as it is about human’s aspiration for harmony, which extends from the arts to physics theories to iPhone design.
I highly recommend all three.
Alexandra Wright-Gladstein, co-founder of Ayar Labs
I'd recommend Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, by John Doerr, and Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening by Manal al-Sharif.
Alexandra Wright-Gladstein
Measure what Matters is a great overview of how several of the top companies of our time use the management method known as OKRs (objectives and key results), first developed by Andy Grove of Intel, to motivate large teams to accomplish impressive goals.
John Doerr learned the method early in his career while at Intel. Then, when he became a VC investor, he started teaching the method to the companies he invested in, including Google.
It is great that the method is now available for the rest of us.
Daring to Drive is just a wonderful story, a page-turner I could not put down. It is the autobiography of a woman who was raised in a conservative part of Saudi Arabia, who eventually revolted by driving a car (an illegal act for women in Saudi Arabia) and putting a video of her doing so on YouTube.
The book came out last year. This year we felt the impact of her life's work and the book when the Saudi government legalised driving for women - an incredible win for Manal and her community.