Books in 2020

Each year Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. Industry analysts and regular contributors Dana Cooperson and Andrew Schmitt kick off this year's highlighted books.

Dana Cooperson, independent analyst

I had difficulty concentrating enough to read during the lockdown despite having more time. Eventually, events spurred my overdue fiction/ non-fiction exploration of the underpinnings of systemic racism as well as some escapism through journeys that the pandemic made impossible.

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Broadcom’s 14.4-terabit Jericho2c+ router chip

The inexorable growth of IP traffic is being driven by ever more powerful devices being connected to the network and greater numbers of machines talking to each other.

In turn, Covid-19 has contributed its own traffic spike: AT&T reported that in September its core network traffic was 20 per cent up compared to March’s figures.

Jericho2c+ architecture. Source: Broadcom

The growth means that each new generation of router platform must at least double the traffic throughput while keeping the power consumption fixed.

This is a considerable challenge but one that the router chip designers continue to meet.

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AI: “It is an astonishing time to be a technologist.”

Want to master artificial intelligence (AI) techniques? A new book, The Supervised Learning Workshop, teaches you how to create machine-learning models using the Python programming language. A conversation with the co-author, Blaine Bateman.

Blaine Bateman is a business strategy consultant, helping companies identify growth strategies and opportunities.

Several years ago he decided to focus on data analysis or, more accurately, predictive analytics using machine learning.

“I started to see that clients had lots of data, frequently they didn’t know anything about it and they weren’t using it,” he says. “At the same time, I started to see that AI and machine learning were really on the uptick.”

Machine learning work is also rewarding, he says: “You build stuff and when you get it to work, you do something that helps someone.”

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800G MSA defines PSM8 while eyeing 400G’s progress

A key current issue regarding data centres is forecasting the uptake of 400-gigabit optics.

If a rapid uptake of 400-gigabit optics occurs, it will also benefit the transition to 800-gigabit modules. But if the uptake of 400-gigabit optics is slower, some hyperscalers could defer and wait for 800-gigabit pluggables instead.

So says Maxim Kuschnerov, a spokesperson for the 800G Pluggable MSA (multi-source agreement).

Maxim Kuschnerov

The 800G MSA has issued its first 800-gigabit pluggable specification.

Dubbed the PSM8, the design uses the same components as 400-gigabit optics, doubling capacity in the same QSFP-DD pluggable form factor.

“Four-hundred-gigabit modules hitting volume is crucially important because the 800-gigabit specification leverages 400-gigabit components,” says Kuschnerov. “The more 400-gigabit is delayed, it impacts everything that comes after.”

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Telecoms embraces 400ZR optics for IP-over-DWDM

Verizon Media has trialled 400-gigabit coherent pluggable optics to improve the delivery of video content to subscribers.

Tomas Maj

Verizon Media added a 400ZR QSFP-DD module from Inphi to a switch already using 100-gigabit optics to upgrade its content delivery network.

Adding dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) optics to a switch enables it to send IP traffic (IP-over-DWDM) directly without needing a separate DWDM data centre interconnect box and additional client-side optics to link the two platforms (see diagram).

“Verizon Media, showing leadership outside the hyperscalers, is moving to IP-over-DWDM,” says Tomas Maj, senior director, marketing, optical interconnect at Inphi. “It shows the maturity of the ecosystem and the confidence of more and more operators in IP-over-DWDM and 400ZR.”

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Telecoms' innovation problem and its wider cost

Imagine how useful 3D video calls would have been this last year.

The technologies needed - a light field display and digital compression techniques to send the resulting data across a network - do exist but practical holographic systems for communication remain years off.

Source: Accelerating Innovation in the Telecommunications Arena

But this is just the sort of application that telcos should be pursuing to benefit their businesses.

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Nokia shares its vision for cost-reduced coherent optics

Nokia explains why coherent optics will be key for high-speed short-reach links and shares some of its R&D activities. The latest in a series of articles addressing what next for coherent.

Part 3: Reducing cost, size and power 

Coherent optics will play a key role in the network evolution of the telecom and webscale players.

The modules will be used for ever-shorter links to enable future cloud services delivered over 5G and fixed-access networks.

Tod Sizer

The first uses will be to link data centres and support traffic growth at the network edge.

This will be followed with coherent optics being used within the data centre, once traffic growth requires solutions that 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) direct-detect optics can no longer address.

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