The expansion of generative AI market will bring about major changes in the communications industry

The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) 2024 was held at the San Diego Convention Center in the United States from March 26th to 28th, 2024.

This event, said to be the world's largest optical communications exhibition, was attended by more than 125,000 people from 83 countries, the same number as before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the number of exhibiting companies increased by 23% from last year to 630. the Company employees participated in this event, which brings together cutting-edge optical communications technologies, so this time we will focus on the exhibition booth.

Atmosphere of the venue

There were even more exhibitors than last time, and the scale of this event was truly impressive, far beyond comparison to events in Japan.

This time, there were areas set up for the pavilions of Japan, China, South Korea, and Germany, with the China Pavilion being particularly large. Many vendors had a large lineup for under 400G, and some companies were mass-producing 800G and had roadmaps for 1.6T.

*Companies at the Japan Pavilion: NEC Corporation, Yuetsu Seiki, Yuasa Electronics, Sumitomo Osaka Cement, Optronics, Kohoku Kogyo, Dexerials

Another thing that was different from the atmosphere at typical large exhibitions in Japan was that at these overseas exhibitions, coffee and donuts are often distributed at the booths, and I was surprised to see that some even distribute alcohol after 4pm.

The keywords this time are "AI," "1.6T" and "LPO"

The theme was quite different from that of 2023, with "AI" being the major theme. The report issued by the organizers stated that "most of the visitors spoke about AI and the changes it will bring to the optical communications industry," and the exhibits once again demonstrated the rapid growth in demand for generative AI.

In addition, it seemed that technologies such as "1.6T" and "LPO (Liner Pluggable Optics)," which are necessary to meet this growing demand, were also attracting attention.

This time, we will touch on these points while introducing the exhibits at the Coherent and MultiLane booths.

MultiLane

Multilane exhibited across seven themes. Among them, we will introduce two exhibits that particularly attracted the attention of visitors at the event, and one main exhibit that we would like everyone reading this article to know about.

[224G signal]

This product, which was new to the market, was an electrical oscilloscope that could measure Eye waveforms (supporting bandwidths up to 70GHz).

This demo system measures the signal with the ML4015E-E-70, passing it through an Amphenol backplane from the PCB, which is the signal source for the 224G signal on the right. Gen3 was used for the oscilloscope GUI. Filters can be added via the software (GUI), and the eye waveform in the photo has a filter added. It was also shown that the eye waveform is crushed with a row signal that does not have a filter added.

【Nexus Analyzer】

This is a tool for debugging the management interface CMIS. For details on the Nexus Analyzer, which can fulfill three roles of MCB, Loopback, and Analyzer in one device, and how to use it, please see this article.

　https://www.macnica.co.jp/business/semiconductor/articles/multilane/144353/

Currently supported form factors are QSFP-DD and OSFP, but a QSFP28 prototype is scheduled to be available around April 2024.

【Ultimus】

This is a switch platform for automation testing.

In addition to the GUI of MultiLane's equipment, test flows can be built with this product using API integration with equipment from other companies. In addition, the product was promoted as being easy to use, as test items added to switches can be dragged to build test flows.

The demo showed an example of automated testing of optical transceiver modules connected to a switch in combination with MultiLane's electrical/optical oscilloscope.

Coherent

There were five exhibits in the Coherent area. Among them, we will introduce three exhibits that were particularly eye-catching.

[Optical Circuit Switch for DC]

The most distinctive feature of this optical switch, which is already in operation by Google, is that it does not require the E/O conversion that conventional switches do. The applications it is used for are mainly AI and machine learning (ML). In the demo, it was actually switched, and the display on the two monitors in front was changed. The operating principle of this switch is that the internal liquid crystal switches the direction of the optical signal.

【LPO】

Here, an 800G-compatible LPO (Liner Pluggable Optics) was on display. Because it is an LPO, it does not have a built-in DSP, and its feature is that it achieves low power consumption of about 9W despite being 800G. Again, the intended applications for this were AI and ML.

[I-temp 100G ZR QSFP28-DCO Optical Transceiver Module]

The demo explained that interoperability is possible by using the I-temp (industrial temperature) 100G ZR QSFP28-DCO to achieve low power consumption in 100G ZR mode with the 400G QSFP-DD DCO.

I understand that currently Coherent is the only company that can provide 100G ZR with QSFP28.

Seminar

I won't go into detail in this article, but overall the lectures on AI and ML attracted a lot of attention, and I was impressed that the need for LPO was mentioned here as well. It really brought home to me that investment in optical communications is on the rise.

The advent of AI will bring major changes to the optical communications industry

We have delivered a report on our participation in OFC2024. The theme has changed significantly since the last event, and it seems that there has been a big movement in the optical communications industry, where AI and ML are now required. It will be held again next year from March 30th to April 3rd, 2025. Why not come and experience the cutting edge of the industry in person?

Macnica handles the world's most cutting-edge products in the communications industry, such as those from Coherent and MultiLane, which are introduced in this report. If you have any questions about products or technology trends that interest you, please feel free to contact us.