Q&A with JDSU's CTO

In Part 1 of a Q&A with Gazettabyte, Brandon Collings, JDS Uniphase's CTO for communications and commercial optical products, reflects on the key optical networking developments of the coming decade, how the role of optical component vendors is changing and next-generation ROADMs. 

"For transmission components, photonic integration is the name of the game. If you are not doing it, you are not going to be a player"

Brandon Collings (left), JDSU

Q: What are the key optical networking trends of the next decade?

A: The two key pieces of technology at the photonic layer in the last decade were ROADMs [reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers] and the relentless reduction in size, cost and power of 10 Gigabit transponders.

If you look at the next decade, I see the same trends occupying us.

We are seeing a whole other generation of reconfigurable networks - this whole colourless, directionless, flexible spectrum - all this stuff is coming and it is requiring a complete overhaul of the transport network. We have to support Raman [amplifiers] and we need to support more flexible [optical] channel monitors to deal with flexible spectrum.

We have to overhaul every aspect of the transport system: the components, design, capability, usability and the management. It may take a good eight years for the dust to settle on how that all plays out.

The other piece is transmission size, cost and power.

Right now a 40 Gig or a 100 Gig transponder is large, power-hungry and extremely expensive. Ironically they don't look too different to a 10 Gig transponder in 1998 and you see where that has gone.

You have seen our recent announcement [a tunable laser in an SFP+ optical pluggable module]; that whole thing is now tunable, the size of your pinkie and costs a fraction of what it did in 1998.

I expect that same sort of progression to play out for 100 Gig, and we'll start to get into 400 Gig and some flexible devices in between 100 and 400 Gig.

The name of the game is going to be getting size, cost and power down to ensure density keeps going up and the cost-per-bit keeps going down; all that is enabled by the photonic devices themselves.

Is that what will occupy JDSU for the next decade?

This is what will occupy us at the component level. As you go up one level - and this will impact us more indirectly than it will our customers - we are seeing this ramp of capacity, driven by the likes of video, where the willingness to pay-per-bit is dropping through the floor but the cost to deliver that bit is dropping a lot less.

Operators are caught in the middle and they are after efficiency and cost advantages when operating their networks. We are seeing a re-evaluation of the age-old principles in how networks are operated: How they do protection, how they offer redundancy and how they do aggregation.

People are saying: 'Well, the optical layer is actual fairly cheap compared to the layer two and three. Let's see if we can't ask more of the somewhat cheaper network and maybe pull some of the complexity and requirements out of the upper layers and make that simpler, to end up with an overall cheaper and easier network to operate.'

That is putting a lot of feature requirements on us at the hardware level to build optical networks that are more capable and do more, as well as on our customers that must make that network easier to operate. 

That is a challenge that will be a very interesting area of differentiation. There are so many knobs to turn as you try to build a better delivery system optimised over packets, OTN [Optical Transport Network] and photonics.

Are you noting changes among system vendors to become more vertically integrated?

I've heard whisperings of vendors wanting to figure out how they could be more vertically integrated.  That's because: 'Well hey, that could make our products cheaper and we could differentiate'. But I think the reality is moving in the opposite direction.

To build differentiated, compelling products, you have to have expertise, capability and technology control all the way down to the materials level almost. Take for example the tunable XFP; that whole thing is enabled by complete technology ownership of an indium-phosphate fab and all the manufacturing that goes around it. That is a herculean effort.

It is tough to say they [system vendors] want to be vertically integrated because to do so effectively you need just a gigantic organisation.

JDSU is vertically integrated. We have an awful lot of technology and we have got a very large manufacturing infrastructure expertise and know-how. We can produce competitive products because for this particular application we use a PLC [planar lightwave circuit], and for that one, gallium arsenide. We can do this because we diversify all this infrastructure, operation and company size across a wide customer base.

Increasingly this is also into adjacent markets like solar, gesture recognition and optical interconnects. These adjacent spaces would not be something that a system vendor would probably want to get into.

The bottom line is that it [the trend] is actually going in the opposite direction because the level, size and scope of the vertical integration would need to be very large and completely non-trivial if system vendors want to be differentiating and compelling. And the business case would not work very well because it would only be for their product line.

"No one says exactly what they will pay for next-gen ROADMs but all can articulate why they want it and what it will do in general terms"

Is this system vendor trend changing the role of optical component players?

Our level of business and our competitors are looking to be more vertically integrated: semiconductors all the way to line cards.

We've proven it with things like our Super Transport Blade that the more you have control over, the more knobs you can turn to create new things when merging multiple functions.

Instead of selling a lot of small black boxes and having the OEMs splice them together, we can integrated those functions and make a more compact and cost-effective solution.  But you have to start with the ability to make all those blocks yourself.

Whether it is a line card, a tunable XFP or a 100 Gig module, the more you own and control, the more you can integrate and the more effective your solution will be.  This is playing out at the components level because you create more compelling solutions the more functional integration you accomplish.

How do you avoid competing with your customers? If system vendors are just putting cards together, what are they doing? Also, how do you help each vendor differentiate?

It is very true. There are several system vendors that don't build their line cards anymore. They have chosen to do so because they realise that from a design and manufacturing perspective, they don't add much value or even subtract value because we can do more functional integration and they may not be experts in wavelength-selective switch (WSS) construction and various other things.

A fair number of them basically acknowledge that giving these blades to the people who can do them is a better solution for them.

How they differentiate can go two ways.

First, they don't just say: 'Build me a ROADM card.'  We work very closely; they are custom design cards for each vendor. They specify what the blade will do and they participate intimately in its design. They make their own choices and put in their own secret sauce.

That means we have very strong partnerships with these operations, almost to the extent that we are part of their development organisations.

The importance of things above the photonic layer collectively is probably more important than the photonic layer. Usability, multiplexing, aggregation, security - all the things that go into the higher levels of a network, this is where system vendors are differentiating.

They can still differentiate at the photonic layer by building strong partnerships with technology engines like JDSU and it allows them to focus more resources at the upper levels where they can differentiate their complete network offering.

"The new generation of reconfigurable networks are not able to reuse anything that is being built today" 

Will is happening with regard photonic integration?

For transmission components, photonic integration is the name of the game. If you are not doing it, you are not going to be a player.

If you look at JDSU's tunable [laser] XFP, that is 100% photonic integration. Yes, we build an ASIC to control the device but it is just about getting a little bit extra volume and a little bit more power. The whole thing is about monolithic integration of a tunable laser, the modulator and some power control elements. And that is just 10 Gig.

If you look at 40 Gig, today's modulators are already putting in heavy integration and it is just the first round. These dual-polarisation QPSK modulators, they integrate multiple modulators - one for each polarisation as well as all the polarisation combining functionality, all into one device using waveguide-based integration. Today that is in lithium niobate, which is not a small technology.

100 Gig looks similar, it is just a little bit faster and when you go to 400 Gig, you go multi-carrier which means you make multiple copies of this same device.

So getting these things down in size, cost and power means photonic integration. And just the way 10 Gig migrated from lithium niobate down to monolithic indium phosphide, the same path is going to be followed for 40, 100 and 400 Gig.

It may be more complicated than 10 Gig but we are more advanced with our technology.

Operators are asking for advanced ROADM capabilities while system vendors are willing to provide such features but only once operators will pay for them. Meanwhile, optical component vendors must do significant ROADM development work without knowing when they will see a return.  How does JDSU manage this situation and is there a way of working smart here?

I don't think there is a terrifically clever way to look at this other than to say that we speak very carefully and closely with our customers.

These next-generation ROADMs have been going on for three or four years now.  We also meet operators globally and ask them very similar questions about when and how and to what extent their interest in these various features [colourless, directionless, contentionless, gridless (flexible spectrum)] lie.

We are a ROADM leader; this is a ROADM question so we'd be making critical decisions if we decided not to invest in this area. We have decided this is going to happen and we have invested very heavily in this space.

It is true; there is not a market there right now.

With anything that is new, if you want to be a market leader you can't enter a market that exists, otherwise you'll be late. So through those discussions with our customers and the trust we have with them, and understanding where their customers and their problems lie, we are confident in that investment.

If you look back at the initial round of ROADMs, the chitchat was the same. When WSSs and ROADMs first came out, the reaction was: 'Wow, these things are really expensive, why would I want this compared to a set of fixed filters which back then cost $100 a pop?".

The commentary on cost was all in that flavour but once they became available and the costs were known, the operators started adopting them because the operators could figure out how they could benefit from the flexibility. Today ROADMs are just about in every network in the world.

We expect the same track to follow. No one is going to say: 'Yes, I’m going to pay twice for this new functionality' because they are being cagey of course.

We are still in the development phase. We are starting to get to the end of that, so the costs and real capabilities - all enabled by the devices we are developing - are becoming clear enough so that our customers can now go to their customers and say: 'Here's what it is, here's what it does and here's what it cost'.

Operators will require time to get comfortable with that and figure out how that will work in their respective networks.   

We have seen consistent interest in these next-generation ROADM features. No one says exactly what they will pay for it but all can articulate why they want it and what it will do in general terms.

You say you are starting to get to the end of the development phase of these next-generation ROADMs. What challenges remain?

The new generation of reconfigurable networks are not able to reuse anything that is being built today whether it is from JDSU or Finisar, whether it is MEMS or LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon).

All the devices that are on the shelf today simply are not adequate or you end up with extremely expensive solutions.

This requires us to have a completely new generation of products in the WSS and the multiplexing demultiplexing space - all the devices that will do these functions that were done by AWGs or today by a 1x9 WSS but what is under development, they just look completely different.

They are still WSSs but they use different technologies so without saying exactly what they are and what they do, it is basically a whole new platform of devices.

Can you say when we will know what these look like?

I think the general architecture is fairly well known.

The exact details of the devices and components are still not publicly being talked about but it is the general combination of high-port-count WSSs that support flexible spectrum, fast switching and low loss, and are being used in a route-and-select approach rather than a broadcast-and-select one. That is the node building block.

Then these multicast switches are being built - fibre amplifier arrays; what comprise the colourless, directionless and contentionless multiplexing and demultiplexing.

That is the general architecture - it seems that that is what everyone is settling on. The devices to support that are what the industry is working on. 

For Part II of the Q&A with Brandon Collings, click here