Lightwave Interview with Kevin Granucci and Alex Guichard at OFC 2021

June 8, 2021

Kevin Granucci & Alex Guichard sat down (virtually) with Lightwave ahead of OFC, to talk about the latest trends in Optoelectronics and what they were most excited about for the future of cooled optics. Watch the interview or read the full transcript below.

Interview Starts at 2:02

TRANSCRIPT

LW: What are the trends at OFC this year that you are watching most closely? 

AG: We are really excited to see 400ZR FINALLY ramping now for datacenter interconnect, general 400G client side optics really coming into its own.

AG: On the more cutting edge, we expect to see module demos of 25G Tunable and 800G client side, probably 8-channel. And we are hoping to catch a glimpse of initial technology demonstrations of 200G/lane. Phononic is watching this very closely as we believe this to be a tipping point for going cooled on even shorter reach client side optics. You don’t have to take our word for it, Google shared in one of your (Lightwave’s) webinars that this inflection point is on the horizon for cooled optics inside the datacenter. We intend to be there to support this extremely demanding technical need.

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AG: Generally, there is a perception that TECs always add cost. For instance, on 100G single lambda, the potential introduction of uncooled EMLs is raising this question of going uncooled again. In our work with customers addressing the performance and cost trade-offs of cooled vs uncooled on 100G-lambda, and we are finding that going uncooled is not the cost reducer it once was.

LW: What else are you really excited about? 

KG: What we’re seeing at OFC is Automotive LIDAR gaining as a topic at all the OFC meetings. We’re really excited about this space, especially for cooled optics for automotive LIDAR. The design cycles are going to take several years, it’s going to be a long time before the ramp, probably in late 2023, and early 2024. But the heavy lifting on the design, from the perspective of doing all the design work, is happening now.

KG: We’re especially excited for 1550 nanometer wavelength solutions for longer reach FMCW applications. So if you’re a design engineer in this space, if you’re suffering from a real high heat load, and struggling to fit everything into a compact package/small form factor — trying to squeeze out every milliwatt of power consumption — Phononic can help you in this space.

KG: And even the reliability and quality requirements for automotive relative to communications can be dramatically different. We can help you and assist you here, our factory in Durham, North Carolina will be certified for IETF by the end of this year.

LW: Always great innovations coming out of Phononic. Thank you, Alex. And thank you, Kevin.

To learn more about Phononic’s TECs for optical communication components visit: Phononic – Optoelectronics