Schedule

Pack your running shoes and meet up for an early morning, 3 mile run or walk with fellow OFC colleagues. Can't make it in person? No problem, join us virtually! Take a selfie, tag #OFC22 and #werunOFC and share it with the rest of the OFC Twitter community @OFCConference.

Organizers:

Omer Khayam, Google LLC, USA
Di Liang, Hewlett Packard Labs, UCSB, USA
Joris Van Campenhout, IMEC, Belgium

Description:

Commercial foundry services and supply chain enablement play a critical role in the ecosystem, particularly to realize the scale and low-cost promise of silicon photonics (SiPho).  In this panel, we will invite SiPho-related foundries to discuss their short- and long-term commercial offering and roadmap to advance SiPho technology for next-gen applications in datacom/telecom (800G and beyond, 5G, CPO), optical compute, optical sensing (LiDAR, spectroscopy), and more. Topics covered will include state-of-the-art photonics building blocks, III-V light source implementation, E-O integration/packaging, fiber attachment solutions, design enablement and reliability & qualification testing. 

Speakers:

Robert Blum, Intel, USA
Title to be Determined

Patrick Lo Guo Qiang, AMF, Singapore
AMF’s Progress of PDK Development and Scale Up Plan

Anthony Yu, GlobalFoundries, USA
Title to be Determined

Edward Presiler, Towerjazz, USA
Title to be Determined

Yutong Wu, TSMC, Taiwan
Title to be Determined

Marcel Boudreau, NeoPhotonics, USA
Laser and Gain Sources for Highly Integrated Photonic Circuits

Andy McKee, Sivers Photonics, United Kingdom
Recent Advances in InP Laser Sources for SiPh Hybrid Integration

Lars Zimmerman, IHP, Germany
Title to be Determined

Oliver Sun, Innolight, China
SiPho Challenges in next generation module

Gunther Vollrath, Aifotech, Germany
Title to be Determined

Organizers:

Nan Chi, Fudan Univ., China
Thomas Clark, John Hopkins Univ., USA

Description:

This panel session will focus on optical wireless systems and technologies for indoor access networks and what it will take to see ubiquitous adoption and become a major part of the wireless strategy for Beyond 5G and 6G networks.  Such networks are expected to take advantage of the inherent benefits of communication over light such as high capacity, immunity to electromagnetic interference and possibilities for massive connectivity. However, to become a serious part of the solution portfolio, these systems must find ways to overcome inherent drawbacks such as physical blockages as well as cooperatively co-exist with other access technologies (for instance WiFi) to realize more robust and capability enhancing access network systems. This session will feature discussions on the enabling technologies for the physical layer, topology control, routing and network architectures and what it will take to get to the practical solutions required for future indoor access networks.

Presentations from the assembled panel of experts will set up important discussion topics and viewpoints and multiple opportunities for audience contributions will be provided. 

Speakers:

Mostafa Afgani, PureLifi, United Kingdom
Practical and Commercial LiFi for Everyone

Lian Chen, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Title to be Determined

Zabih Ghassembooy, Northumbria University, United Kingdom
6G Wireless Network and the Role of Visible Light Communications

Boon Ooi, KAUST, Saudia Arabia
High-Speed, Wide Field-of-View transceivers for Indoor Optical Wireless Communication

Open Optical Disaggregation: What the Heck is Going On?

Organizers: Dan Pitt, Palo Alto Innovation Advisors, USA; Stephan Pachnicke, Kiel University, Germany

Open disaggregation has revolutionized the world of servers (enabling hyperscale cloud computing) and is surging to upend switches and routers. Optical communication is next, at all distance scales. We have seen some success with initial efforts in OCP, TIP, MEF, and ONF but these are the tip of the iceberg. In this summit we delve into the most profound developments in open optical disaggregation as we hear from the leading disruptors along with the incumbents trying to smooth the transition.

Among the key topics to explore are where disaggregation is emerging in the most unexpected places, how disaggregation has boosted innovation due to unbundling, what the fundamental APIs and interfaces are and who defines them, and what challenges or unanticipated consequences inhibit the speed of disaggregation.

In both individual talks and a panel discussion we will hear from the leading voices in this transformational change to the optical communications industry. Ponder this: How will these developments affect your job in five years?

Speakers:
Andy Bechtolsheim, Arista Networks, USA
Robert Blum, Intel, USA
Eric Breverman, Google, USA
Ramon Casellas, CTTC, Spain
Ron Cok, X-Celeprint, USA
Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA, Germany
Andreas Gladisch, Deutsche Telekom, Germany
Karl May, Lumen Networks, USA
Yawei Yin, Microsoft, USA

• 

  Lynn Nelson

  Director, Optical Platform Development, Network Infrastructure and Services, AT&T, USA

  
  Open ROADM: Vision, Progress and Plan
  
  Open ROADM is a multi-source-agreement among nearly 30 service providers and suppliers with the goal of defining interoperability specifications, both optical and YANG data models, for ROADM-based systems.  This talk will focus on why Open ROADM is critical to AT&T, current progress on active deployment in AT&T’s metros, and near-term plans.  I will also comment on recent advancements of the Open ROADM MSA and AT&T’s vision for opening up our long-haul network.

Session Description:

Ethernet’s adoption continues to spread across application spaces with increasing diversity in its rates and implementation. Ethernet over optical and electrical cabling is finding new forms of implementation. This is not just diversity in form factor for the module at the ends but also in deployment scenarios. New higher capacity modules are being introduced to support multiple ports of a lower rate of Ethernet as their primary purpose. In some cases, the new higher rate of Ethernet the module could support has not yet been defined but is in process to be standardized (e.g., 800G and 1.6T Ethernet). The new co-packaged optics scheme goes even farther with it target implementation capacity that goes well beyond even the rates of Ethernet in consideration (e.g., 3.2T). The panel will cover the defining aspects of Ethernet and how the industry seeks to preserve interoperation regardless of implementation. When I see it, how do I know it is Ethernet?

Moderator: 

David Rogers, Sr. Program Manager, Teledyne LeCroy PSG, USA

Panelists: 

Paul Brooks, Optical Transport Technology and Strategy, Viavi Solutions, Germany

Faisal Dada, Director, Strategic Marketing; Principal Architect, Xilinx, USA

Jeff Maki, Distinguished Engineer II, Juniper Networks, USA

Ray Nering, Product Manager, Engineering, Cisco Systems, USA

Biographies: 

Paul Brooks, Optical Transport Technology and Strategy, Viavi Solutions, Germany

Paul has worked in the communications test and measurement industry since he joined Wandel & Goltermann in 1995.  After several roles in R&D including leading up the groups for analog and DSP he has been focused on marketing roles for high speed optical transport. With his role in VIAVI he is active at the OIF and IEEE and has been part of efforts to actively support the pluggable digital coherent optics ecosystem.  Originally from Ireland he lives in Southern Germany where he laments the lack of first class rugby.
 

Faisal Dada, Director, Strategic Marketing; Principal Architect, Xilinx, USA

Faisal Dada is a Principal Architect & Director in the Wired & Wireless Group at Xilinx, where he manages strategic and technical engagements with customers and service providers. He has more than 20 years’ experience working in different capacities in the industry. At Xilinx he is responsible for the optical transport and access global markets and works closely with product planning on defining next generation products. He has published papers, spoken at conferences and attended standard bodies as part of his responsibility at Xilinx.
 

Jeff Maki, Distinguished Engineer II, Juniper Networks, USA

Dr. Jeffery Maki works on cloud optics. He is a member of the board of directors of the Ethernet Alliance and an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet voter. For OIF, he is PLUG chair and technical voter for Juniper Networks. He is co-chair of the 100G Lambda MSA and a founding member of the QSFP-DD800, QSFP-DD, SFP-DD and Open-Eye MSAs. For COBO, he is a member of the board of directors, VP and Data Center Networking working group chair. He is an OSA and IEEE member. He has a Ph.D. in Optics from The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.
 

Ray Nering, Product Manager, Engineering, Cisco Systems, USA

To be determined.
 

David Rogers, Sr. Program Manager, Teledyne LeCroy PSG, USA

To be determined.

Join us for this 1-hour workshop as Career Coach Kolby Goodman of The Job Huntr provides us with career advancement tips to attendees so that they can land new positions fast. he has been featured in a variety of publications including Huffington Post, LinkedIn, PopExpert, MediaBistro, Career Intelligence, and MainStreet. At the end of this presentation attendees will be able to:

• Understand today’s job market numbers and how to turn the odds in their favor in today’s job hunt
• Audit their online brands and take action on how to improve them to best market their expertise
• Think more like the hiring manager to better position themselves as a high-value job candidate
• Optimize their profile to stand out and help recruiters and hiring managers to find them easily
• Realize the power of their current network and how to put it into action to help them land new jobs fast

Session Description:

The world changed for fixed network operators during the pandemic. End user behaviors permanently increased traffic demand and changed traffic patterns. While existing access networks coped reasonably well, operators are facing critical investment decisions. Should operators increase investment in existing copper-based DSL and coax-based HFC networks, or should they be redirecting capex from these to accelerate PON FTTH? Will operators finally leverage PON infrastructure at large scale for mobile transport and SLA-based business services? What speeds will be required in this decade, 10G, 25G, 50G? The pandemic has also laid bare the digital divide and the U.S. government in particular is allocating massive subsidies for rural networks. How should these funds be spent? How much will be/should be diverted from fiber to fixed wireless access and satellite broadband? And what is the prognosis for PON-based 5G transport and business services? What is the new roadmap for beyond 10G PON: 25G, 50G.

Moderator: 

Ed Harstead, Lead Technology Strategist, Nokia, USA

Panelists: 

Ian Horsley, Sr. Manager Access Transmission Research, BT Openreach, United Kingdom
Further, Fast, Cheaper and Using Less Energy

Robert Kuse, Director Cox Business Network Engineering, Cox, USA
Title to be Determined

Nick Payant, VP, Connectivity and Reliability, Bell, Canada
Building the Networks of the Future Now

Ed Walter, Area Manager Network Planning, AT&T, USA
State of PON in AT&T

Dechao Zhang, Manager, China Mobile, China
Title to be Determined

Biographies: 

Ed Harstead, Lead Technology Strategist, Nokia, USA
In the 1990s, Ed Harstead led standardization and implementation of first gen TDM PON technologies and managed first gen WDM PON research. Ed spent most of the 2000s in DWDM transport product management. In the current decade he has been supporting the Nokia CTO for fixed networks, with a recent focus on the standardization of high speed PON.

Ian Horsley, Sr. Manager Access Transmission Research, BT Openreach, UK
Ian joined BT after a Masters in Engineering from Cambridge University. He has been involved in the design and standardisation of a wide range of DSL technologies and currently leads BT’s access research including optical access. He has (co-)authored 20 patents. He is vice-chair of the working party for transport aspects of access in the ITU-T SG15.

Robert Kuse, Director Cox Business Network Engineering, Cox, USA
Bio not available.

Nick Payant, VP, Connectivity and Reliability, Bell, Canada
Nicholas Payant, Vice-President, Connectivity and Reliability, is accountable for the development, planning, engineering, deployment and operation of the Core Network connectivity, including internet, MPLS, CPE and data center infrastructure to enable all of Bell’s services to run seamlessly for their customers.

Ed Walter, Area Manager Network Planning, AT&T, USA
Ed Walter joined AT&T in 2000 and is currently a Director Member Technical Staff within the Converged Access Architecture organization.  Ed has been engaged in Access ideation and development since 2006 when he joined the AT&T Lightspeed project to deploy Broadband/IPTV over xDSL and PON.  He is currently leading test teams that develop and certify Broadband and Mobility Transport technologies at AT&T.  He is an AT&T 2020 Science and Technology Medal Recipient awarded for his significant contributions to Broadband Access technologies, as well as a prolific inventor with over 100 Patents.

Dechao Zhang, Manager, China Mobile, China
Bio not available.

Session Description:

The OIF released the 400ZR Implementation Agreement in March’2020 and wide-scale deployment is well underway for this new interoperable coherent standard. In this panel session by OIF industry experts we’ll give an overview of 400ZR, including ongoing maintenance, and highlight its deployment status, networking topologies, and use cases. The panel will then give an overview of current 800ZR and 800LR technical work including technical challenges and insights on where the options of DWDM and unamplified versions could be deployed and the trade-offs to be made. Is this the point where coherent networking does come into the data center?

Moderator: 

Richard Ward, Engineering R&D, Intel; Market Awareness & Education Committee Co-Chair, Physical & Link Layer, OIF, USA

Panelists: 

Tom Williams, Sr. Director of Marketing, Cisco, USA

Ian Betty, Sr. Director, Coherent Modem Development Team, Ciena, Germany

Joseph Berger, Associate VP Marketing, Marvell Technology, USA

Mark Filer, Optical Network Architect, Google; OIF, VP and Board Member, USA
400ZR and Beyond

Biographies: 

Joseph Berger, Associate VP Marketing, Marvell Technology, USA
Josef Berger has more than 20 years of experience in high-speed optics. Mr. Berger is the Associate Vice President Marketing, Optical Interconnect at Inphi, focused on next generation data center interconnect solutions. Prior to joining Inphi,  he was the Chief Commercial Officer at Optical Zonu, an analog fiberoptic systems company, developing wireless solutions for US carriers and government agencies. Prior to that, Mr. Berger was at Source Photonics serving as its Vice President of Global Sales, Marketing and Business Development. Subsequently he was Director of Product Marketing at Opnext, which later merged with Oclaro. He holds a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Applied Sciences Munich and a M.S. degree in Physics from San Diego State University. Josef is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

Ian Betty, Sr. Director, Coherent Modem Development Team, Ciena, Germany
Ian is a Senior Director in the Coherent Modem Development Team at Ciena, and he has been involved in all of Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent modem product introductions during his 14-year tenure.  He is a Ciena Distinguished Engineer and has been active at the OIF since 2007.  Ian served on the OIF Board of Directors 2016-2021 and served as OIF President October 2020-2021.   For 10 years, prior to joining Ciena, Ian guided InP Mach-Zehnder modulator component development at Bookham and Nortel, to commercial success. Ian has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo, an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Queen's University, more than 25 publications and invited talks, and he holds 17 patents.

Mark Filer, Optical Network Architect, Google; OIF, VP and Board Member, USA
Mark works at Google as Optical Network Architect, where his primary focuses are campus, metro DCI, long-haul, and subsea optical solutions, and next-generation data center architectures. Prior to joining Google, Mark spent 7 years in Microsoft Azure HW and Networking orgs in Redmond, WA, and 14 years in optical R&D at ADVA Optical Networking in Atlanta, GA. He has numerous publications and patents in the areas of cloud-scale open line systems, long-haul transmission, ROADM network architectures, and DWDM system impairments. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. Mark currently serves on the OIF Board of Directors as Vice President.

Richard Ward, Engineering R&D, Intel; Market Awareness & Education Committee Co-Chair, Physical & Link Layer, OIF, USA
Richard has 30 years’ experience in the IC industry and is currently in Intel's Silicon Photonics Products Division working on high speed components for optical modules and co-packaged optics. He is an editor in the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) for the 3.2Tb/s Co-Packaged Optical Transceiver for ethernet applications, and the High Bandwidth Coherent Driver Modulator (HB-CDM) for coherent systems to 128Gbd. Previously to Intel, Richard was Senior Director in Optical Interconnect at Inphi working on Coherent systems components and has a Serdes circuit design background with Texas Instruments, and holds various patents on high performance circuit techniques.

Tom Williams, Sr. Director of Marketing, Cisco, USA
Since 2015, Tom has been responsible for global marketing activities for Acacia Communications, now a part of Cisco Systems. Prior to Acacia, Tom spent 14 years at Optium and Finisar Corporations, where he held various management roles, including Director of Product Line Management for high speed (>100G) transmission products. Tom has also held positions at Lucent Technologies and Northrop Grumman Corporation. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Widener University.
 

Organized by: 

Provide feedback and notes on resumes including layout, optimizing language and how to write about their past responsibilities and accomplishments so that they show what kind of impact they can have on their next employer.

Session Description:

Following the successful launch and OFC21 session on Optics for Mobile (MOPA), by 5 leading companies (Ericsson, Nokia, Sumitomo, Lumentum, II-VI), this effort and overall standardization of Optics for Mobile is progressing with broader and deeper topics. This session will outline these new efforts benefitting the industry as a whole as well as make future outlooks.

Moderators: 

Stefan Dahlfort, PhD, Product Development Leader, Ericsson, USA; Ron Heron, Director of Network and Portfolio Strategy, Nokia, USA

Panelists: 

1. Sumithra Bhojan, Director Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, USA

2. Lieven Levrau, Sr. Director Networking Infrastructure Strategy, Nokia, France

3. Antonio Tartaglia, Ericsson, Italy

4. Justin Abbott, Director, Product Line Management, Lumentum, Canada

Biographies: 

Justin Abbott, Director, Product Line Management, Lumentum, Canada

Justin Abbott is a Director of Product Line Management at Lumentum, responsible for strategy and road mapping for the company’s Optical Transceivers portfolio.  Justin has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunication industry, first starting as an Analog IC Designer, then transitioning into Product Line Management. At Lumentum, responsibilities initially included 100G/400G PAM4 product lines, and are now focused on specialized tunable product lines for telecom,  mobile, and distributed access architecture (DAA) applications.
 

Sumithra Bhojan, Director Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, USA

Sumithra Bhojan is a Director Member of Technical Staff at AT&T responsible for strategy and ideation of RAN Transport and Broadband Wireline Access systems. In her current role in AT&T labs, she has been focused on 5G Fronthaul transport for Centralized RAN architecture and various broadband technologies (xPON, G.fast) for fiber broadband service.

Stefan Dahlfort, PhD, Product Development Leader, Ericsson, USA

Stefan has worked in the tele­com industry for more than 25 years. He started at an incumbent telecom operator and founded a start-up before joining Ericsson in 2007 as a manager for fiber to the x research. Having held different management positions in Research and Networks Systems & Technology in the transport area, he is now based in Santa Clara in Silicon Valley as a product development leader. He holds an M.Sc. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in optical networking from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ron Heron, Director of Network and Portfolio Strategy, Nokia, USA

To be determined.
 

Lieven Levrau, Sr. Director Networking Infrastructure Strategy, Nokia, France

Lieven Levrau received an M. Sc. degree in Applied Physics engineering (Photonics) from the University of Brussels (V.U.B.) in 1994 and he has studied Avionics at the University of Ghent (BE). He has participated in several European and national research projects. His current research interests are focused on design issues related to multi-layer deterministic networking, especially in network virtualization related issues, security and multi-layer optical packet and transport networks for service providers and cloud providers. With his solid background in IP/MPLS networking technology and design, he leads, in his currently role as Product Line Director within the Optical Networking Business Division (ONBU), the Business Unit strategy covering mobile transport solutions and architectures and virtualization converged access solution, including 5G, and the network virtualization tool suite. He is an IEEE member and Alcatel-Lucent Technical Academy (ALTA’08) member. He allocates his free time between making his own music, learning to fly an aircraft and obtaining his pilot license (PPL), and creating oil canvas paintings.
 

Antonio Tartaglia, Ericsson, Italy

To be determined.

Session Description:

Disaggregated optical networking is shifting from an aspirational strategy to a reality in service provider networks. This panel will explore the benefits of disaggregation and which application spaces best harness its advantages and will discuss the obstacles involved for widespread adoption/deployment. It will also explore what strategies and innovations have been developed to approach challenges with multi-vendor architectures. Finally, this panel hopes to provide a call to action for the vendor community on what functions are most needed in this area.

Moderator: 

Art Nichols, VP, Technology, Windstream, USA

Panelists: 

Vivek Gaur, VP Network Engineering, Colt, India

Aaron Werley, VP Technology, Zayo Group, USA

Gert Sarlet, Director Product Management, II-IV, Sweden

Biographies: 

Vivek Gaur, VP Network Engineering, Colt, India

To be determined.
 

Art Nichols, VP, Technology, Windstream, USA

To be determined.
 

Aaron Werley, VP Technology, Zayo Group, USA

To be determined.
 

Gert Sarlet, Director Product Management, II-IV, Sweden

To be determined.

Organizers:

Hitesh Ballani, Microsoft Research Ltd., UK
Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Hewlett Packard Ent., Belgium
S. J. Ben Yoo, Univ. of California Davis, USA

Description:

Edge Computing has become extremely important due to the rapid increases of data volume, low latency, privacy/security needs, 5G/6G. The ambition is to stop the need to rely on the cloud all the time, and process information at the location where it makes sense, which in some cases means where the data is generated.  To process this massive amount of data, advanced techniques from the AI/ML community are required, whereas photonics has a crucial role to play to increase throughput and reduce overall latency and energy-consumption. Examples of application domains with AI/ML opportunities in an Edge Computing context are ubiquitous: autonomous Vehicles, (Mobile) Medical Facilities, high frequency trading, (industrial) IoT based manufacturing and farming, 5G smart cell edge data center, AR/VR…

Our panellists will discuss how recent advances in photonics are critical to address some of the challenges that appear in this diverse set of workloads. 

Speakers:

To be determined.

Session Description:

Applications for coherent optical communications have expanded into orbit, enabling high speed satellite communications. In this panel, we will discuss recent advances in optical communications for space-based applications and their impact on global connectivity.

Moderator: 

Greg Kuperman, Program Manager, DARPA, USA

Panelists: 

To be determined.

Biographies: 

To be determined.

Session Description:

In this industry session we will provide updates from the OpenROADM MSA covering aspects of B100G implementations. We also cover the development efforts of TransportPCE with the primary focus on higher bit rate services. Finally, we conclude the session with the OpenROADM interoperability demo.

Moderator: 

Balagangadhar Bathula, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, USA

Panelists: 

Yoshiaki Sone, Sr. Researcher, NTT, Japan
Introduction to OpenROADM and Recent Updates

Olivier Renais, Optical Transport Network Architect, Orange, France
Update on TransportPCE Latest Developments

Tomizawa Masahito, VP, Head of Device Innovation Center, NTT, Japan
Title to be determined.

Andrea Fumagalli, Professor, Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Texas, Dallas, USA
Initiatives to Support the OpenROADM Mission

Biographies: 

Balagangadhar Bathula, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, USA
Balagangadhar Bathula received the Ph.D. degree in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is currently working as a Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Network Core Infrastructure and Services, AT&T Labs, USA. Before joining AT&T, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York. He is leading the activities of OpenROADM Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) (disaggregated transport layer). His research interests are in software-defined networks (SDNs), open architectures for transport, cross-layer network architectures, backbone network design, network cost optimization, optical networks and telemetry, and machine learning. He served as a reviewer for many IEEE/OSA conferences/journals. He has published several articles in the area of optical networks and holds five patents.

Andrea  Fumagalli, Professor, Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Texas, Dallas, USA
Bio not available.

Tomizawa Masahito, VP, Head of Device Innovation Center, NTT, Japan
Bio not available.

Olivier Renais, Optical Transport Network Architect, Orange, France
Olivier Renais received his master‘s degree of Optronics in 1992 from the E.N.S.S.A.T Lannion. He has been working as a System Engineer in Pirelli and CISCO Systems, as a consultant in NORTEL, and joined Orange Labs Lannion in 2005 as an optical network architect. He is currently involved in OpenROADM and transportPCE, an OpenDaylight project which provides a reference implementation for the control of OpenROADM based optical infrastructures.

Yoshiaki Sone, Senior Researcher, NTT, Japan
Yoshiaki Sone, Senior research engineer in NTT. He received M.E. degrees in electronics engineering from Tohoku University, Miyagi, in 2003. In 2003, he joined NTT lab and has been engaged in research on network engineering technology for optical transport networks and related standardizations. His experience also covers field application engineering of coherent component products at NTT electronics America from 2017 to 2021.

Session Description:

In the mission to expand Machine Learning (ML) capabilities, system scaling/optimization and relieving key I/O bottlenecks become critical. The panel will discuss various architectures and approaches to scaling ML, and the potential role of optical technologies: from tighter integration, higher speed interfaces, to lower latency channels/compute. We will also discuss the overlap or bifurcation of these optical technologies for ML versus other high volume datacenter applications, and implications to cost and the industry as a whole.

Moderator: 

Ryohei Urata, Technical Lead/Manager, Google, USA

Panelists: 

Paolo Costa, Principal Researcher, Microsoft, USA
Optical Networking for Machine Learning: The Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Larry Dennison, Director of Network Research, Nvidia, USA
Title to be Determined

Nick Harris, CEO, Lightmatter, USA
Beyond Toy Platforms: Taking Photonic Computing to Production Workloads and Environments

Robert Stone, Technical Sourcing Manager, Meta (formerly Facebook), USA
Optical Interconnects for AI / ML Fabrics

Biographies: 

Paolo Costa, Principal Researcher, Microsoft, USA
Paolo is a Principal Researcher in the Cloud Infrastructure Group in Microsoft Research and an Honorary Lecturer with the Department of Computing of Imperial College London. His current research brings together hardware, optics, networking, and application-level expertise to take a cross-stack view towards developing optical technologies for next-generation data-center networks.

Larry Dennison, Director of Network Research, Nvidia, USA
Dr. Dennison joined NVIDIA in September of 2013 and leads the Network Research Group.  His current research interests include large networks of GPUs, switch micro-architectures, network-on-chip and photonic interconnects.  At, NVIDIA, he was the principal investigator for the DesignForward project which was responsible for several GPU shared-memory concepts such as NVSHMEM and NCCL.  His team proposed development of a GPU shared memory fabric and developed the first NVSwitch architecture. Prior to NVIDIA, he worked on software systems such as high-performance distributed applications, database scaling for the cloud and software-defined networking. He also architected and led the development of the ASIC chipset for the Avici Terabit Router which utilized a 3-D toroidal network. At BBN, Dr. Dennison was the principal investigator for MicroPathfinder, a wearable computer that connected to other wearables over a very low power RF network. Dr. Dennison holds Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nick Harris, CEO, Lightmatter, USA
With over 30 patents and 70 publications in journals including Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, and Physical Review X, Nicholas’ seminal work on quantum and classical information processing with integrated photonics has helped launch the international research field of programmable photonics. Nicholas has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review through the prestigious Innovators Under 35 award (2021). The award had over 500 nominees and a panel of 30 judges including artificial intelligence luminary Andrew Ng; previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder), and Jony Ive (Apple). He received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and later served as a Postdoctoral Fellow through the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Robert Stone, Technical Sourcing Manager, Meta (formerly Facebook), USA
Rob Stone is a member of the infrastructure team at Meta, focusing on next generation optics and networking. Prior to Facebook, Rob was a distinguished engineer at Broadcom within the switch architecture team and is active in a of industry communities including IEEE as well as MSAs and industry organizations. Rob holds a D.Phil. in Physics from The University of Oxford.

Ryohei Urata, Technical Lead/Manager, Google, USA
Dr. Ryohei Urata is currently a Principal Engineer/Director in the Platforms Optics Group, where he has defined/developed Google's datacenter optical technologies and corresponding roadmap for the past decade. Prior to joining Google, he was a research specialist at NTT Photonics Laboratories, Japan. He has over 150 patents, publications, and presentations in the areas of optical interconnect, switching, and networking. He received the B.S. degree in engineering physics from the University of California at Berkeley (Highest Honors), and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University (Stanford Graduate Fellow). He was elected Optica/OSA Fellow in 2022.

Session Description:

The IEEE panel on next gen 800GbE optical interfaces and future 1.6TbE standardization will cover new developments happening in the industry and IEEE which include interoperable 800 Gbps coherent spec, and new work that covers 1.6T or co-packaging. This panel will show the latest results, market drivers, customer needs, etc. on these topics with a high level / applications focus.

Moderator: 

Mark Nowell, Fellow, CISCO, USA

Panelists: 

John D'Ambrosia, Distinguished Engineer, IP Standards Team, Futurewei (subsidiary of Huawei), USA
Introducing IEEE P802.3df - The Path to 1.6 Terabit Ethernet

Cedric Lam, Engineering Director, Google Fiber, Google, USA
Physical Layer Architectures – More Than Just 200 Gb/s Per Lane

Samuel Kocsis, Director, Standards & Technology, Amphenol, USA
A Datacenter Operator's Perspective Beyond 400 GbE

Gary Nicholl, Principal Engineer, Cisco, Canada
Optical PMD Overview for 800 GbE and 1.6 TbE

Biographies: 

John D'Ambrosia, Distinguished Engineer, IP Standards Team, Futurewei (subsidiary of Huawei), USA
John D’Ambrosia is a Distinguished Engineer at Futurewei Technologies, a U.S. subsidiary of Huawei. John is currently the Acting Chair of the IEEE P802.3df 200 Gb/s, 400 Gb/s , 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s Task Force.  He is also chairing the IEEE P802.3cw Task Forces that is developing  400 Gb/s Ethernet over DWDM systems.  Previously, Mr. D’Ambrosia led the IEEE 802.3 task forces that developed 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet, 200 Gb/s and 400 Gb/s Ethernet, as well as the IEEE 802.3 New Ethernet Applications Ad hoc.  John is also a member of the IEEE 802 LMSC Executive Committee and is an IEEE Senior Member.  In addition to his multiple roles in IEEE 802, he is an advisor to the European Photonics Industry Consortium and was the Chairman of the Ethernet Alliance from 2011 to 2019.  His previous work experience includes Dell, Force10 Networks, and Tyco Electronics.

Samuel Kocsis, Director, Standards & Technology, Amphenol, USA
Sam Kocsis currently holds the role of Director of Standards and Technology at Amphenol, focusing on the proliferation of innovative interconnect solutions. Sam coordinates Amphenol’s involvement in various industry standards and consortiums across networking, server/storage, optics, and commercial markets. He is active in IEEE 802.3 and OIF projects, leads several ad-hoc activities for the OSFP MSA and currently chairs the PCI SIG Cabling Workgroup. Sam holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York.

Cedric Lam, Engineering Director, Google Fiber, Google, USA
Cedric F. Lam is a Principal Engineer in the Google Technical Infrastructure team.  He is now leading the coherent optical interconnect development for datacenter applications.  Cedric first joined Google in 2009 as an optical network architect.  He was a cofounder of the Google Fiber program which changed the landscape of broadband access networks in North America. 

Prior to Google, Cedric was the Chief System Architect of Opvista, a startup company on optical transport network equipment.  He also worked at AT&T Labs - Research on broadband access networks.  Throughout his career, Cedric worked on wireline as well as wireless network technologies, long haul, metro, access and short reach optical interconnect technologies.  He is a Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA).

Gary Nicholl, Principal Engineer, Cisco, Canada
Gary is a Principal Engineer working in the Transceiver Module Group (TMG) at Cisco Systems.  He is responsible for defining strategy and technology for high speed optical interfaces across Cisco’s routing and switching platforms. Prior to join Cisco, Gary spent 10 years at Nortel Networks in Ottawa, working in various R&D roles in the development of OC-3, OC-12 and OC48 optical transport products. Gary holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manchester (UK).

Mark Nowell, Fellow, CISCO, USA
Mark Nowell is a Cisco Fellow in Cisco’s Data Center Business Unit. His focus is on next generation interconnect technology innovation to meet Cisco's needs. Mark is also active within the industry standards and forums and has chaired multiple IEEE 802.3 Ethernet projects. He represents Cisco on various industry alliances and Consortium. Mark also chairs a number of industry MSA (Multi-source Agreement) groups focusing on next generation optical module form factors (QSFP-DD, QSFP-DD800) and optical interface signaling technology (100G Lambda MSA, 400G BiDi).

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