Palo Alto – April 3, 2024 – This past week, I attended the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in San Diego. Having gone for many years, the show, companies, and presenters are familiar territory. It’s always great to connect with old friends and former colleagues.

The show’s energy and attendee enthusiasm were much higher than last year. Last year, it felt as if everyone was hanging on. This year, many are bullishly planning for rapid growth. And for good reason: Quantum processing and AI are beginning to drive sweeping improvements. These two technologies were everywhere. Nvidia even showed up with optical technology shopping lists. While current products using these technologies are under discussion, few have rolled out. Next year, I anticipate significant AI announcements. This year’s hot topics included photonic integration, hollow fiber, and other evolutionary developments. I’m particularly encouraged by the progress in linear drive pluggable optics (LPO) to reduce cost and power, especially at 400Gb and above.

For me, these were the highlights this year:

Important Announcements
OFC 2024 was abuzz with significant announcements. The conference also highlighted the highest in-person participation in recent years (estimated at 13,000 participants from over 70 countries with 540 exhibiting companies), reflecting its status as the premier platform for optical industry innovation¹.

Technical Breakthroughs 
The OFC 2024 conference highlighted several technical breakthroughs² that are shaping the future of optical communications:

• 800ZR: This technology significantly advances coherent optical modules, enabling high-capacity and long-reach connections essential for data center interconnects.
• Coherent PON: A new approach to passive optical networks, Coherent PON promises to increase the capacity and extend the reach of fiber access networks.
• Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO): LPOs are designed to simplify the deployment of high-speed optical links by offering a standardized, pluggable interface.
• Multicore Fiber: This breakthrough involves fibers with multiple cores, increasing the total capacity and data throughput without additional infrastructure. Also, Microsoft’s impressive improvements in propagation and latency through the use of hollow fiber are noted.
• AI and the Data Center: Artificial intelligence is being integrated into data center operations to optimize network performance and efficiency.
• Quantum Networking: Quantum networking represents a leap forward in secure communications, leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics.

Collaborations
Collaboration was a key theme at OFC 2024, with Ethernet Alliance, OIF, and Open ROADM leading multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations³. These collaborations have come together at OFC for many years. Many booths had network connections to a miniature onsite data center featuring internal, metro, and long-haul applications.

Hot Companies
While there were a large number of innovative companies exhibiting, six jumped out at me as ones to watch:

1. Teramount
   Its revolutionary approach to integrating optical fibers with silicon photonics chips showcased TeraVERSE®, a detachable fiber connector to silicon photonic chips for co-packaged optics applications. It simplifies the manufacturing process while boosting performance and reliability.
2. Nubis Communications
   The XT1600 is a 16 x112 Gbps optical engine optimized for electrical and optical performance. Operates in direct-drive applications without a dedicated optical DSP to save power and cost. It supports various protocols and data rates while fully compliant with 100G-DR1, 200G-DR2, 400G-DR4, 800G-DR8, and future 1.6T Ethernet.
3. NewPhotonics
   Newly announced, the NPG102 second generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with integrated optical equalizer is a breakthrough for linear receive optics (LRO) and linear drive pluggable optics (LPO) applications. AI workloads in the data center drive greater demand for minimal latency and power performance than the NPG102 provides at 800 GBps and 1.6 TBps.
4. Celestial AI
   An important core technology that addresses significant processing problems with large language models is Celestial’s Photonic FabricTM technology. It genuinely addresses the memory bottleneck between processors and out to other system components and networks. As evidence of its appeal, Celestial just announced a new $175M capital raise.
5. RANOVUS
   RANOVUS announced a significant collaboration with MediaTek. Its standards-compliant Odin® direct-drive CPO 3.0 optical interconnect, with 4pJ/bit energy efficiency, including the laser, delivers the highest 100Gbps optical I/O radix in the smallest form factor to enable computation-intensive training and memory-intensive inference workloads. Available in a single chip that includes 100Gbps TIAs, Drivers, Silicon Photonics Modulators, and Photodetectors, Odin® CPO 3.0 includes optical features that enable passive fiber and laser die to attach on the EPIC die at scale.
6. Optalysys
   Able to operate on encrypted data at speed, Optalysys has announced its fully homomorphic encryption solution. “FHE” means real-time processing of always-encrypted data, a topic of increasing importance. While the product is not available in production, customer designs have begun. Optalysys’ technical approach, which is still mostly under wraps, is impressive, in my opinion.

Mergers and Acquisitions
While specific mergers and acquisitions were not highlighted at the conference, the industry is experiencing a period of accelerated M&A activity. This trend indicates the dynamic nature of the optical networking sector and its readiness for future consolidation⁴.

General Optical Fiber News
The conference featured discussions on emerging fiber technologies that could disrupt future optical networks.

As an example, David Richardson from Microsoft provided insights into the use of hollow fiber⁵. Showed the progress and benefits of hollow fiber. Maintaining a vacuum inside the fiber can improve transmission losses and even propagation speeds by 20% or better. Microsoft is aggressively building out inter-data-center data transport for replication using hollow fiber. In addition, it will be a godsend for high-frequency trading applications. The benefits are faster propagation for time-sensitive applications, net 20% improvement in bandwidth, and the ability to locate data centers farther apart. David also received a lifetime achievement award. It’s impressive that Microsoft is installing these hollow-fiber networks to service traffic between its Azure data centers.

Additionally, Trumpf and Optomind showcased a 100Gbps VCSEL in an 800Gbps transceiver, marking a significant step in high-speed data transmission⁶. OFC 2024 has set a new precedent for innovation and collaboration in the optical fiber industry. As AI continues to push optics further into the data center, the conference has established itself as the platform for meeting innovators and witnessing the next wave of technological disruption⁷.

Footnotes and references 
1. OFC 2024 Brings Innovations from Leading Global Organizations And Cutting-Edge Tech Demonstrations to California
2. OFC 2024 to showcase high-speed optical networking and interoperability
3. OFC 2024 Celebrates Unprecedented Success, Spotlights a Thriving and Expanding Optical Communications and Networking Industry
4. OFC 2024: More Than 600 Industry-Leading Companies Will Showcase the Trends Defining Optical Networking and Data Center Communications
5. OFC 2024: What are the emerging fibre technologies for future optical networks?
6. OFC 2024: Trumpf, Optomind showcase 100Gbps VCSEL in 800Gbps transceiver
7. OFC 2024 Celebrates Unprecedented Success, Spotlights a Thriving and Expanding Optical Communications and Networking Industry