OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 3

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. Here are the thoughts of BT's Professor Andrew Lord, author and consultant, Daryl Inniss, and Cignal AI's Kyle Hollasch.

Andrew Lord, senior manager of research and optical networks, BT Group.

I am excited to see the developments around 100G ZR pluggables. Assuming they can hit the power requirements, I can imagine them being used across the edge for years to come.

I learned that there is some confidence in the optical community that optics has a significant part to play in the AI revolution. But this is still primarily associated with high bit rate transport, whether it be fibres or inter-chip. Photonic integrated switches to assist with future GPUs is, on the other hand, likely to be limited by the wavelength of light and resulting small numbers of components on a realistic-sized photonic integrated circuit.

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ECOC 2023 industry reflections - Final Part

Gazettabyte has been asking industry figures to reflect on the recent ECOC show in Glasgow. The final instalment emphasises coherent technology with contributions from Adtran, Cignal AI, Infinera, Ciena, and Acacia.

The popular Market Focus sessions at ECOC

Jörg-Peter Elbers, head of advanced technology at Adtran

The ECOC 2023 conference and show was a great event. The exhibition floor was busy and offered ample networking opportunities. In turn, the conference and the Market Focus sessions provided information on the latest technologies, products, and developments.

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The market opportunity for linear drive optics

A key theme at OFC earlier this year that surprised many was linear drive optics. Its attention at the optical communications and networking event was intriguing because linear drive - based on using remote silicon to drive photonics - is not new.

Scott Wilkinson

"I spoke to one company that had a [linear drive] demo on the show floor," says Scott Wilkinson, lead analyst for networking components at Cignal AI. "They had been working on the technology for four years and were taken aback; they weren't expecting people to come by and ask about it. "

The cause of the buzz? Andy Bechtolsheim, famed investor, co-founder and chief development officer of network switching firm Arista Networks and, before that, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

"Andy came out and said this is a big deal, and that got many people talking about it," says Wilkinson, author of a recent linear drive market research report.

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ECOC 2022 Reflections - Part 1

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.

In Part 1, Infinera's David Welch, Cignal AI's Scott Wilkinson, University of Cambridge's Professor Seb Savory, and Huawei's Maxim Kuschnerov share their thoughts.

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Books in 2019

Gazettabyte asks industry figures each year to cite the memorable books they have read. These include fiction, non-fiction and work-related titles. 

Here are the choices of Cisco’s Bill Gartner, Sylvie Menezo of silicon photonics start-up, Scintil Photonics, and Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst at Cignal AI.  

Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Optical Systems and Optics.

At the top of my list is The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee does an amazing job of telling the story of the gene, providing historical context dating back to pre-Darwin times through to modern advances in gene therapy. The material is complex but he is great at describing the evolution of thinking about genes and progress in the genome project in layman's terms. 

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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.

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Books in 2017

Gazettabyte has asked various industry executives to discuss the books they have read in 2017. Here two market researchers give their recommendations.

Andrew Schmitt, founder and lead analyst of Cignal AI

I didn’t have a good year with books. I bought more than these and either didn’t read them or I lost interest. Hopefully, 2018 will be better.

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman was a big disappointment. It is a well-researched book and has tons of great history on Claude Shannon but there was something about the writing style that made it turgid. I struggled to finish it but learned a lot about Claude Shannon, including that his home in Boston wasn’t far from mine.

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