ECOC Review and Highlights

Now that we're several weeks removed from ECOC, I've had time to review and reflect about it. It was my first visit to Europe's largest optical components conference and I was impressed. All of the companies that I wanted to speak with were there and I found the programming both on the show floor and in the conference tracks relevant to optical networking today as well as in the future.

Highlights:

• Short Reach Optics Workshop:  Focused on solutions for solving all kinds of issues with high-data-rate signals. Subjects included data center networking, optical backplanes, standards roadmaps, Ethernet and Fibre Channel optical device technology evolution, embedded optics, surface-emitting DFB lasers, hybrid electrical/optical PWBs, Silicon Photonics, polymer waveguides and polyboards. The key take away was that while the pluggable modules will be around for some time that eventually these may have to be eliminated as higher data rates are adopted.
• Space-Division Multiplexing (SDM):  There was a workshop dedicated to SDM. To me, this has always meant multiple fibers, but now, companies are using this term to describe using "few-mode fibers" as well. There are several companies that are developing this technology. Coriant seems to be at the forefront and presented several papers at ECOC and was one of the first companies to demonstrate that SDM is feasible in an existing network with its trial with Telekom Austria earlier this year. It seems that the concept has spurred a whole new area of fiber development.
• Data Center Optics:  While all of these new technologies are great, we still need to be realistic about opportunities in the short-term. That's what my presentation at the Market Focus session on data centers was about. Below is an excerpt of slides from this presentation.

The largest market opportunity will be for 10G SFP+ SR modules over the next five years.

There are too many 100G form factors and still no variant that addresses the 100m to 10km reach/cost gap.

Over the next five years, media in the data center will go from mostly copper to mostly fiber.

The majority of that fiber will be LOMF OM3.