OFC Conference

Thank you for attending #OFC24, Lumentum, we can't wait to see what comes next!

For ⚛️ World Quantum Day on Sunday, watch this engaging overview of #quantumnetworking delivered by Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Executive Director Inder Monga at the end of his OFC Conference #OFC24 plenary speech! You’ll learn about bits vs. qubits, Schrödinger's cat and superpositioning, the challenge of building quantum repeaters to enable entanglement (aka Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”) of multiple qubits, teleportation via photons, and more. Inder is the Principal Investigator for #QUANT-NET, the Quantum Application Network Testbed for Novel Entanglement Technology (https://quantnet.lbl.gov/), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and comprises experts from Berkeley Lab, University of California, Berkeley, Caltech, and Universität Innsbruck. Watch the quantum portion of Inder's #OFC24 plenary: https://lnkd.in/dFAeEmxn 🗓 Why April 14? ⚡ 4.14 = the rounded first digits of Planck’s constant, a product of energy and time that is the fundamental constant governing #quantumphysics. Learn more about World Quantum Day: https://lnkd.in/dNykYsMT

We had a great team and a great time at this year's OFC Conference - six WinPhoS Research Group members (myself, Konstantinos Vyrsokinos, Miltiadis Moralis-Pegios, Christos Pappas, Theodoros Moschos, Stefanos Kovaios) together with our former group member Angelina Totović (now with Celestial AI) and our good friend and collaborator Petar Atanasijević from University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering. Couldn't have been prouder about this team: 1 invited talk from Miltiadis Moralis-Pegios, 5 more oral presentations, one Top-Scored paper presented by Theodoros Moschos and last but not least a Post-Deadline Paper presented by Christos Pappas! Bravo to all of you!

🚀✨ Our journey at OFC 2024 in the USA has come to a successful close! ✨🚀 A heartfelt thank you to all our valued customers who visited our booth and engaged with us during the exhibition. Your presence made our participation truly meaningful and rewarding. 🙏 Special appreciation goes out to our dedicated colleagues who worked tirelessly from start to finish to ensure the success of our showcase. Your commitment and hard work are deeply appreciated! 💼👏 To our prospective clients who couldn't make it to the event, we extend a warm invitation to visit our company and explore potential collaboration opportunities. We're excited to discuss how we can work together to achieve mutual success. 🤝💼 Thank you once again for your support and enthusiasm. Looking forward to continued partnerships and future endeavors! ✨#OFC #OFC2024 #FTTH #Tranmile #TranmileNews #TranmileTech #Innovation #NetworkManagement #NewTechnology #Gratitude #Partnerships #Success #Teamwork 🌟

MAKING THE BEST USE OF WHAT WE'VE ALREADY GOT USING PHOTONICS. The UK’s Strategic Approach to Data Transmission Efficiency As we learned at both the Optical Fiber Communication OFC Conference and Trends in Optics and Photonics (TOP Conference) this year, efficiency is paramount when it comes to data transmission.  I noted the remarks from Optica corporate member Infinera and the University of Southampton: about the urgent need for the UK to speed up its infrastructure and catch up. Activating Underutilized Resources Now, researchers from the UK’s Aston University, collaborating with partners from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan and Nokia Bell Labs in the USA, have made significant strides with what’s ALREADY deployed. By leveraging the untapped potential of current optical fibre infrastructure, they've achieved a remarkable feat: As part of an international collaboration, the academics transferred data at a rate of 301 Terabits per second using a single, standard optical fibre. That’s 4.5 million times faster than the average home broadband in the UK of 69.4 Mbit/s megabits per second (painfully slow !).  Led by Professor Wladek Forysiak and Dr. Ian Phillips, this initiative represents a strategic leap forward in data transmission capabilities. So what did they do? Traditionally, optical fibre systems have operated within the confines of the C and L-bands for data transmission. However, by tapping into additional spectral bands like the E-band and S-band, previously overlooked, the team has effectively expanded the bandwidth available for data transmission. Dr Phillips' leadership in developing an optical processor at Aston University has been key in this endeavour, enabling controlled emulation of E-band channels and enhancing overall transmission capacity. Meeting Market Demands: A Strategic Advantage As data demands driven by AI usage are escalating rapidly, the ability to maximize existing infrastructure provides an important strategic advantage. Businesses can achieve greater transmission capacity without the need for costly infrastructure upgrades. In the Future: Hollow Core Rollout Starting Recent advancements in hollow-core fiber have solved earlier high-loss issues, leading to a decision in the UK to deploy it in future. Since light travels faster through air than glass, HCF cables have an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. Thanks to reduced signal distortion, the result offers faster data transmission speeds and lower latency. Its design also leads to lower energy consumption, making it more environmentally friendly compared to traditional solid-core fibers. I think these achievements underscores the power of collaboration in driving international technological advancements. Well done! #DataTransmission #OpticalFibre #Innovation #Technology #Collaboration #BusinessStrategy

Infinera's Senior Vice President of Marketing, Robert Shore, joined #OFC24 at the exhibit hall to showcase how Infinera supports network operators! At the exhibition, Infinera demonstrated connectivity solutions to provide higher-speed services over longer distances and address the growing need for greater bandwidth. #networks #bandwidth

At #OFC24, OFCnet enabled live demonstrations of networking products, solutions, and architectures with expanded quantum demonstrations. 2024 OFCnet chair Marc Lyonnais shares how this year, OFCnet showed firsthand the transformative potential of quantum networking, programmability and network software for big data applications. Interested in how OFCnet showcased emerging technologies? Learn more here: https://ow.ly/HciM50R8ugv #bigdata #technology #quantum #networking

"Wait, thats me!" Many thanks to all the remarkable scientists and engineers who not only ispire us, but who also make working in the #OFC24 #NagelLounge so much fun! (and weren't mad at me for using their pictures) Christina Lim, Jun Shan Wey, Gabriella Bosco, Lidia Galdino, and Lynn Nelson.

WATCH THIS DEMO! At OFC Conference 2024, Teramount announced a collaboration with GlobalFoundries and Ayar Labs to address the challenge of connecting fibres to Silicon Photonics chips. Optica Corporate member Teramount has integrated its Universal Photonic Coupler solution with GF’s 45CLO silicon photonics platform, GF FotonixTM, to provide a scalable fibre packaging solution for applications like AI/ML and data centres. But I wanted to see for myself. So, I dropped by their OFC Conference booth on Thursday for a live demo from Hesham Taha, Teramount President and CEO. If you know anything about silicon photonics, you’ll realise the real significance of their new milestone. Stay tuned as our coverage continues. (And if you celebrate, Happy Easter).

OFC 2024 – MAIN TAKEAWAYS: It’s a wrap! It is time to summarize what we have learned from OFC Conference 2024 and follow up with the meaningful connections that we have made. With 12,500 registrants from 74 countries, and 630 exhibiting companies on the showroom floor, plus the Optica Executive Forum brought together the brightest and best. OFC was dominated by AI, including NVIDIA's launch of a new chip the week before. At the Optica Executive forum, discussions revolved around integrating AI with photonics. Then came a striking elephant in the room. Nvidia showed a comparison between copper and optical technologies. They argued that despite many advantages of optics, NVIDIA continues to rely on copper. They reason that optical computing chips are too large, requiring narrow operating temperatures. NViDIA’s in-memory computing is twice as fast as an external GPU. So, for now, at least, some major challenges for optics need to be answered in the data centre. The CEO panel at the Executive forum agreed that AI is not a bubble. So the industry will need a joint roadmap quickly to provide counterarguments to data centre owners. Companies like Corning Incorporated, showed that on the fiber front, photonics is still key to faster expansion of datacenters. Customers need to deploy 70% faster while reducing their reliance on skilled labour. Operators want to push more fiber into smaller spaces, while also meeting complex sustainability goals. 3 Takeaways from OFC 1. Power and Cost Savings Innovations: We saw several significant network architecture advancements to reduce power consumption and operational costs. Arista Networks's exploration of LPO and LRO, thus removing DSPs, suggests savings of 25% —40%. On the materials front, several companies demonstrated their ability to scale effectively: Lithium Niobate from HyperLight, Liobate or Ori-Chip Optoelectronics Technology Co. ltd., Polymer from Lightwave Logic, Inc., NLM Photonics or SilOriX, Plasmonics from Polariton Technologies Ltd., or BTO from Lumiphase.   People always ask me who will win. My reply is usually, " Those who can scale reliably.” As shown by Hong Liu from Google at the Executive Forum, we also need more intelligent optical switches. Companies like iPronics Programmable Photonics or Lightmatter are already making an impact. 2.Is Hollow Fiber a thing? At OFC we saw OFS and IXBlue Photonics (now Exail) bringing developments on this. 3. Live demos and OFCnet: It was the year of 200G/lane, and companies like LightwaveLogic, Infinera, and NewPhotonics demonstrated 200G transmission. Impressed by Accelink Technologies Co., Ltd. too. And QTI SRL, demonstrated the maturity of QKD using the demo facilities provided by OFCnet. And so we bid farewell to San Diego for the time being. Next year, on March 30th, OFC opens at Moscone in San Francisco. But I am sure we’ll see one another before then—maybe even here in Rochester, NY, where I am now.