Lightwave Exclusive: Interview with Phononic at OFC 2023

March 16, 2023

Phononic recently exhibited at the the Optical Network and Communication Conference (OFC) in San Diego, CA. During the conference Ana Berry, the Technology Correspondent at Lightwave, a leading media source of technical information for optical communications strategists, interviewed Kevin Granucci, Chief Revenue Officer at Phononic.

During the interview, they discussed how Phononic is enabling the next generation of TECs for coherent modules, the road map to 1.6 T, and the future of LiDAR. The interview was featured in Stephen Hardy’s Video Show Daily video series.

Interview starts at the 7:59 mark on the video below – full transcript of the video below.

Full Transcript of the Interview Below:

Ana: Yes I am here with Kevin Granucci, the CRO at Phononic. Ok, OFC first Day, tell us a little bit about what you have seen at this show and what you are excited about.

Kevin: Thanks, good to see you again. I think the lead up to OFC and what I have seen on the floor it is really about 1.6 T. I think that going to be the big message for 2023. On the coherent side with announcements on 1.2 T & 1.6 T, we always love coherent here at Phononic as every module needs a TEC. But I have been really surprised on the client side on how many live demos of 1.6T type modules are being addressed right now. Essentially, the challenges from a power consumption and packaging situation for both client side and line side, present and massive opportunity for Phononic Thermoelectrics that can help address some of those challenges.

Ana: So talk a little bit more about that and what Phononic’s role in supporting industry goals, road maps and schedules towards the 1.6T revolution.

Kevin: Absolutely, I think in two different ways, one on performance and one on the ease of doing business perspective. On the performance side, again its all about decreasing power consumption and miniaturizing packaging, we like to work with our customers & partners, we really try to understand the entire stack of their module design. We understand, by working with our customers, that seeking out every tens of milliwatts of power consumption and any extra millimeters of space from a volume perspective has a critical impact on their designs.

On ease of doing business perspective, we really pride ourselves on an applications-specific approach, on really iterating with customers. Essentially, my R&D team and my manufacturing team wouldn’t want to hear this, but we really want to challenge ourselves and our design rules. So, we ask our customer to approach us with a design, iterate with us, simulate with us, iterate again, and work to lock in the design and take advantage of our design partnership from a time to go-to-market perspective.

Ana: So you have been coming to OFC for 20 years, talk about anything new, anything different from priors years.

Kevin: There are always tangential market segments that are being addressed at OFC. I think given one of the strong trends that we have been seeing in this particular year has been around LiDAR and autonomous driving. A lot of customers and colleagues that we have all worked with in the past have moved from optical communications into the LiDAR space. In that space, they are experiencing the same challenges in cooling lasers. This technology is not for passing packets to enable your Netflix video streaming, this is really about human safety. What I am finding for the automotive market is the requirements for quality in the automotive space are even higher and more difficult to pass. We are excited as we are taking the same application-specific design principles that we are known for in optical communications, and bringing them to the LiDAR side – especially for long range ToF and FMCW applications.

OFC 2023 Video Show Daily – Day 2 from Endeavor Business Media on Vimeo.