ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Part III

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Here are contributions from Aloe Semiconductor's Chris Doerr, Hacene Chaouch of Arista Networks, and Lumentum's Marc Stiller.

Autumn morning near the ECOC congress centre in Frankfurt

Chris Doerr, CEO of Aloe Semiconductor

If there was one overall message from ECOC 2024 this year, it is that incumbent technologies are winning in the communications market.

Copper is not giving up. It consumes less power and is cheaper than optics, and now, more electronics such as retimers are being applied to keep direct-attach copper (DAC) cables going.  Also, 200-plus gigabaud (GBd) made a debut in coherent optics, but in intensity-modulation direct-detect (IMDD), 50GBd and 100GBd look like they are here to stay for several more years.

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Cloud and AI: Opportunities that must be grabbed

The founder of Cloud Light, Dennis Tong, talks about the company, how its sale to Lumentum came about, and the promise of cloud and AI markets for optics.

For Dennis Tong (pictured), Hong Kong is a unique place that has a perfect blend of the East and West.

Tong, the founder and CEO of optical module specialist Cloud Light, should know. The company is headquartered in Hong Kong and has R&D offices in Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan. Cloud Light also has manufacturing sites in Asia: in the Chinese city of Dongguan—two hours by car north of Hong Kong—and in the Philippines.

Now, Cloud Light is part of Lumentum. The U.S. photonics firm bought the optical module maker for $750 million in November 2023.

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How scaling optical networks is soon to change

Carrier division multiplexing and spatial division multiplexing (CSDM) are both needed, argues Lumentum’s Brian Smith.

The era of coherent-based optical transmission as is implemented today is coming to an end, argues Lumentum in a White Paper. 

Brian Smith

The author of the paper, Brian Smith, product and technology strategy, CTO Office at Lumentum, says two factors account for the looming change.

One is Shannon’s limit that defines how much information can be sent across a communications channel, in this case an optical fibre.

The second, less discussed regarding coherent-based optical transport, is how Moore’s law is slowing down.

”Both are happening coincidentally,” says Smith. “We believe what that means is that we, as an industry, are going to have to change how we scale capacity.”

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Marvell kickstarts the 800G coherent pluggable era

Marvell has become the first company to provide an 800-gigabit coherent digital signal processor (DSP) for use in pluggable optical modules.

The 5nm CMOS Orion chip supports a symbol rate of over 130 gigabaud (GBd), more than double that of the coherent DSPs for the OIF's 400ZR standard and 400ZR+.

Meanwhile, a CFP2-DCO pluggable module using the Orion can transmit a 400-gigabit data payload over 2,000km using the quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation scheme.

The Orion DSP announcement is timely, given how this year will be the first when coherent pluggables exceed embedded coherent module port shipments.

This is the year coherent pluggable modules exceed embedded coherent port shipments. Source: LightCounting

"We strongly believe that pluggable coherent modules will cover most network use cases, including carrier and cloud data centre interconnect," says Samuel Liu, senior director of coherent DSP marketing at Marvell.

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Brandon Collings

There are certain news items on media sites that nothing can prepare you for.

A post by Lumentum on LinkedIn paid tribute to the passing of CTO Brandon Collings, aged 51; the unfolding words revealing the magnitude of the company’s loss.

Brandon Collings was a wonderful person and a joy to know. He had that rarest gift of being able to explain complex technologies and make sense of trends with considered answers of extraordinary clarity.

Who else could explain the intricacies of a colourless, directionless, contention-less, flexible, reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) while describing the ROADM market as “glacially slow”?

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Lumentum’s CTO discusses photonic trends

CTO interviews part 2: Brandon Collings

• The importance of moving to parallel channels will only increase given the continual growth in bandwidth.
• Lumentum's integration of NeoPhotonics’ engineers and products has been completed.
• The use of coherent techniques continues to grow, which is why Lumentum acquired the telecom transmission product lines and staff of IPG Photonics.

Brandon Collings has been a CTO for over 13 years; first as CTO of the commercial optical products (CCOP) business within JDSU and then CTO of Lumentum when it spun out in 2015. In that time, the scope of his work has continued to grow.

Brandon Collings

"It has changed quite significantly given what Lumentum is engaging in," he says. "My role spans the entire company; I'm engaged in a lot of areas well beyond communications."

A decade ago, the main focus was telecom and datacom. Now Lumentum also addresses commercial lasers, 3D sensing, and, increasingly, automotive lidar.

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Lumentum bulks up with NeoPhotonics buy

Lumentum is to acquire fellow component and module specialist, NeoPhotonics, for $918 million.

The deal will expand Lumentum’s optical transmission product line, broadening its component portfolio and boosting its high-end coherent line-side product offerings.

Vladimir Kozlov

Gaining NeoPhotonics' 400-gigabit coherent offerings will enable Lumentum to better compete with Cisco and Marvell. Lumentum will also gain a talented team of photonics experts as it looks to address new opportunities.

Alan Lowe, Lumentum’s president and CEO, stressed the importance of this collective optical expertise.

Speaking on the call announcing the agreement, Lowe said the expanded know-how would benefit Lumentum’s traditional markets and accelerate its entrance into other, newer markets.

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