17 Mar 2026
10:30 - 11:30
Expo Theater II
The explosive investment in AI/ML infrastructure has led to significant growth in data center optics, starting with the evolution of scale-out interconnects to 200G PAM4 per channel, and the increasing interest in system integration of CPO/NPO/LPO/TRO and new, capacity and density (e.g., 64 lanes) pluggables. This CPO/xPO evolution is also combined with a new photonics technology ecosystem optimized for AI/ML interconnects, which aims to lower power, latency, and cost, and also enable scale-up domains beyond copper interconnects, as discussed in the OFC 2025 IEEE panel. The OFC 2026 IEEE panel builds on last year's panel to review the most critical system and network implications of the CPO/NPO/xPO and new photonics ecosystem, and to debate, beyond hype, the main benefits and requirements like reliability (both hard and soft failures), serviceability, or host SERDES I/F (e.g. 200G PAM4, PCIe, or UCIe), as well as other critical open topics like for example the importance of standards, MSA, and supply chain diversity.
Presented By:
Moderator
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Loukas Paraschis
Lumentum, Vice President, Business Development , United States
Panelists
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Mark Filer
OCI Architect, Physical Networking, Oracle, United States
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Rob Stone
Meta, Networking Infrastructure , United States
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Shahab Ardalan
Fellow Silicon Engineering, AMD, United States
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Sunil Priyadarshi
Senior Director, AI Hardware Architecture, Arista, United States
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Yawei Yin
Senior Principal Network Developer, Microsoft, United States