Fiber and optical technologies are critical to supporting the exponential growth in traffic — from moving data sets for AI training, to allowing fast inferencing, to unlocking digital transformation across our industry.
Converged Packaged Optics (CPO), LPO (Linear-drive Pluggable Optics), 800ZR, 400ZR, OpenZR+ optic are all trends we're seeing in the wide area transport, inter-data center connectivity, cross-racks, in-rack connectivity. Check out the latest views from the leaders in the space in our top reel video featuring presenters from Infinera, Ranovus, OpenLight, Spirent, Fujitsu, and Nokia.
2024 OFC
Welcome to the NextGenInfra OFC 2024 Showcase. We've grabbed tens of videos from leading thinkers in the optical space — vendors, carriers, hyperscalers, data center operators at OFC 2024 in San Diego.
Watch the videos below captured on the show floor at OFC 2024, and check out our recent reports. You can download our 2023 NextGenInfra (NGI) Report Bundle comprising our New Middle Mile, Data Center Networking (AI and Cloud Workloads), Private Wireless, and SASE/SD-WAN/ZTNA/NaaS Enterprise Networking — one form, four reports, enjoy!
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Optical Fiber Conference 2024
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2024 OFC
Views expressed are those of the presenting individuals and companies and may not necessarily represent views of Converge! Network Digest or AvidThink.
800G Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) Demo
At #OFC24, Tiger Ninomiya of Accelink hosted a demo of 800G Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO).
OIF's demos at OFC 2024
Mike Klempa, Product Marketing specialist at Alphawave Semi and chair of the OIF’s PLL interoperability working group, announces the OIF’s interoperability demonstration at OFC 2024 featuring nearly 50 participating companies. The event showcased the first multivendor interoperability demonstration with 800 ZR modules, aiming to deliver more data at lower power.
AMD's 800G Progress & Multi-Layer Security
At OFC 2024, Gilles Garcia, Senior Director at AMD, discussed two major industry trends: the significance of 800G and the growing need for layered security in transport networks. AMD showcased their 800G FPGA-based solution and three types of security measures, including a post-quantum crypto capable system.
Moving Data at the Speed of AI
Mark Wade, CEO and Co-founder of Ayar Labs, shares the latest in optical I/O for next-gen AI systems.
Ushering in Terabit Transceivers
Manish Mehta, VP Marketing of Broadcom’s Optical Systems Division, discusses the company’s advancements in optical components, including the development of terabit transceivers and plans to showcase 200G EMLs and 200G VCSELs for use in 1.6 Tbps transceivers.
All-Optical Circuit Switching for Scalable Data Centers
Sanjai Parthasarathi, CMO of Coherent, presented the company’s Liquid Crystal-based Optical switch platform, emphasizing its low drive voltage, absence of moving parts, data rate agnosticism, and power reduction capabilities of 30-40%, making it an attractive solution for power-hungry data centers. Parthasarathi also revealed plans to sample the platform in the coming months, commercialize it next year, and noted strong interest from data center operators, hyperscalers, and OEMs.
800G Linear Receive Optics Connected to 51.2T Switch
Easwar Sankar, Optical FAE Director at Credo, demos the company’s new Linear Receive Optics (LRO) product, Dove 850. In an LRO transceiver, or Active Optical Cable (AOC), only the transmit path from the electrical input to the optical line side output includes a DSP for signal retiming and equalization. This unlocks dramatic power savings.
Big Power Savings with 800G Linear Receive Optics
Bill Brennan, President and CEO of Credo, highlights the energy savings possible with 800G Linear Receive Optics (LRO) for AI clusters.
Rethinking Optical Modules for Liquid Immersion
Dust Photonics’ transmit Carmel-8-IMC chip supports an optical assembly with no free-space optics. Inside the chip, lasers are butt-coupled to the PIC and the fiber is also attached directly to the PIC, thus enabling transceiver designs that can be used for both immersion and air cooling. Ronnen Lovinger, CEO of Dust Photonics, shares a demo.
Coherent Pluggables for 25GE to 400GE Metro Aggregation
Jason Lauzon, Strategic Sales Director at DZS, unveiled the Saber 2200, a high-capacity layer 2 Ethernet aggregation switch developed in collaboration with Infera. The new product supports XR Optics, features 24 ports of varying gig capacity, and is part of DZS’s exploration of XRS with their Edge RMS, a hardened RM system that utilizes XR as a spectrum as a service.
800 Gigabit Ethernet Interoperability Demo
The Ethernet Alliance’s OFC 2024 booth showcases Ethernet’s versatility and reliability at speeds of up to 800 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). The booth demonstrated a wide range of switches, routers, interconnects and interfaces including OSFP, QSFP-DD, QSFP, and SFP pluggable form factors. Dave Estes shares an overview.
Key Trends in Optical Networks and AI
Richard Colter, Head of Marketing at Fujitsu Network Communications, discussed key trends at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, including enhancements to the Infinity Ultra Optical system, the growing importance of AI automation in network design, and the shift of funds from wireless to green initiatives for network modernization.
Indium Phosphide (InP) Interconnect for AI Infrastructure
Robert Shore, SVP of Marketing at Infinera, highlights challenges network operators face in providing longer reach connectivity between AI clusters. Infinera’s solution involves the use of indium phosphide, a technology that enables the creation of a single integrated photonic circuit, reducing costs, increasing manufacturability, and lowering power.
Optical Innovation for the Terabit Age
Robert Shore, SVP of Marketing at Infinera, showcases new solutions including their enhanced GX platform, new aggregation cards, the ICE 7 1.2 terabit optical engine, and optical line system functionality. Infinera will present its suite of intelligent coherent pluggable optics (ICE-X) and new applications for its Open Wave network automation suite.
Intel's Optical I/O Chiplet Co-Packaged with Server CPU
Christian Urricariet from Intel’s Silicon Photonics Product Division, unveiled the company’s first Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) chiplet, a high-density optical IO solution capable of supporting up to 4 terabits per second bi-directionally, enabling it to interconnect CPU or other high-performance chips.
Intel's Silicon Photonics Roadmap
Intel is making a strategic shift from providing full transceiver modules to supplying key chipsets for the growing pluggable market in silicon photonics. At OFC24, Intel also announced 1.6 Tbps components supporting 200G/lane for both the DR and FR formats. Amit Nagra, VP and GM of the Silicon Photonics Product Division, shares highlights.
Transforming Cloud Interconnects with 800ZR/ZR+
Marc Stiller, VP of Product Line Management at Lumentum, shows the latest 800G ZR+ and 400F high power ZR+ modules for coherent communications in metro and longhaul applications.
A New Class of Silicon Photonics for AI Data Centers
Loi Nguyen, EVP and GM of Optical at Marvell, unveiled their 3D SiPho engine, a silicon photonics engine that delivers 6.4 Tbps, enhancing speeds for AI applications. Featuring 200G I/O, the 3D SiPho Engine delivers 2x the bandwidth and input/output (I/O) bandwidth density, and 30% lower power per bit versus devices with 100 Gbps electrical and optical interfaces.
Transmit-Retimed Optical DSPs Yield Huge Power Savings
Marvell VP of Product Marketing, Xi Wang, highlighted the rising demand for optical connectivity in AI cluster. Marvell has introduced a new product, Spica Gen2-T, a transmit-only DSP that enables a new type of optical module, the Transmit Retimed Optical (TRO) module, which can reduce power consumption by 40% while ensuring flexibility and scalability.
Massive Upgrades Coming with 200G per Lane Channels
Marvell’s Vice President of Product Marketing, Xi Wang, unveiled a new product, Nova 2 designed to address the shift to 200G. Nova 2, an optical DSP, facilitates the construction of 1.6 Tbps optical transceiver modules, enhancing connectivity and computing power for next-generation AI.
New 800ZR and 800ZR+ Pluggables Extend Reach
Stephen Adolph, AVP of CDSP Product Line Management at Marvell, introduces Orion DSP that uses probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS), crucial for hyperscale network operators needing increased network distance. PCS extends 800G reach to over 1,000 km, an improvement over 800G ZR+ at 500 km.
Demonstrating Marvell's Latest Portfolio Solutions for AI
George Hervey, Principal Architect at Marvell, showcased their AI infrastructure solutions: a 51 Tbps switch, 800G AEC cables, and 800G optics for low-latency switching. The demonstration also highlighted a 51 Tbps platform with a liquid cooling option and another 51 Tbps platform using 64 800G OSFP modules.
Interoperability with LPO & LRO at 800G and 1.6T
Linear receive optics (LRO) and linear drive pluggable optics (LPO) were hot topics at #OFC24. Yosef Ben Ezra, CTO and Founder of New Photonics, introduces a 2nd generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with integrated optical equalizer capable of supporting 800G and 1.6T modules.
Nokia's Quantum-Enhanced Encryption over Optical
Ljuban Kasikovic, SE for Optical, IP, SDN and DC at Nokia, discusses their quantum-safe photonic key creation system that enhances Nokia’s existing encryption system, and is being used by vendors in banking, healthcare, and government sectors across Europe, Asia, and North America.
New Optical Capabilities for the Metro Edge
Hector Menendez, Product Marketing Manager at Nokia, has announced the launch of the 1830 PSS (photonic service switch), a Metro-optimized optical platform designed to support diverse requirements at the Metro Edge, particularly beneficial for 5G applications, enterprises needing higher capacity access, and data centers requiring high capacity connectivity.
800ZR, 400ZR and OpenZR+ Optics Interoperability
OIF hosted its latest pluggable coherent optics demonstration, showcasing the latest advancements in 800ZR, 400ZR and ZR+ optics interoperability. The demo highlights include the first public 800ZR multivendor interop; high transmit power, OpenZR+ over a 1000km, multi-span network; OpenROADM/ITU-T over that same network; and 400ZR collocated on the single-span network with 800ZR. Karl Gass, Physical and Link Layer Working Group Optical Vice Chair from OIF, provides some highlights:
CPO External Laser Small Form-Factor Pluggables
The External Laser Small Form-Factor Pluggable (ELSFP) IA will define a future proofed external laser source form factor to support co-packaged optical modules. Nathan Tracy walks us through the #OFC24 demo.
800G, LPO, and Other Big Trends at #OFC24
Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight, highlighted the transition to 800G and the future need for 1.6 Tbps. Carter also discussed OpenLight’s strategic partnership with Jabil to mainstream silicon photonics, the transition to 400G, and the future direction towards 200G lanes.
Scaling Silicon Photonics to Meet the AI Challenge
Are we underestimating the manufacturing requirements for optical modules needed to AI? Adam Carter, CEO from OpenLight, shares some insights.
Co-Package Optics (CPO) Takes a Huge Step Forward
Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus, discusses the growth of co-package optics and the significant investment by industry giants such as TSMC, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD/Xilinx, SilTerra, and Mediatech. Arabzadeh highlights the company’s new generation of co-package optics that includes a self-contained optical engine.
Advanced DFB Laser Arrays for I/O in AI Clusters
Sivers Photonics is supplying its DFB laser arrays for Ayar Labs’ SuperNova optical interconnect for AI/ML clusters, disaggregated data centers, 6G networks, phased array sensor systems and etc. Anders Storm, CEO from Sivers Semiconductors explains.
Advanced DFB Laser Arrays for I/O in AI Clusters
Sivers Photonics is supplying its DFB laser arrays for Ayar Labs’ SuperNova optical interconnect for AI/ML clusters, disaggregated data centers, 6G networks, phased array sensor systems and etc. Anders Storm, CEO from Sivers Semiconductors explains.
Spirent's 800G 802.3df Appliance & LPO optics support
Steve Rumsby, Senior Director of Architecture & Platform at Spirent, unveiled the Spirent B3 800G Appliance supporting IEEE 802.3df. The B3 Appliance also supports linear pluggable optics (LPO), an interconnect that uses lower power and latency. He also showcased 800G interconnects (DACs, AOCs, ACC and ZR transceivers) from 11 different partners.
Validating 800G links and AI/ML Workloads
Asim Rasheed, Product Manager, High Speed Ethernet, at Spirent, showcased a range of products from 100G to 800G, including the A1 Appliance with 16 ports of 400G, capable of emulating hyperscaler network flows. Rasheed also demonstrated sending 1.6 Tbps of live traffic through 2 800G ports on a Juniper switch.
Intelligent Re-drivers for Linear Pluggable Optics
Armond Hairapetian, Founder and CTO of Terasignal, introduces a novel re-timer for linear plugin optics (LPO). The device not only reduces power but also introduces diagnostic features in the chip, allowing end users to assess link quality and extract vital diagnostic information.
Demonstrating Marvell's Latest Portfolio Solutions for AI
George Hervey, Principal Architect at Marvell, showcased their AI infrastructure solutions: a 51 Tbps switch, 800G AEC cables, and 800G optics for low-latency switching. The demonstration also highlighted a 51 Tbps platform with a liquid cooling option and another 51 Tbps platform using 64 800G OSFP modules.