Workshop: Spatial or Spectral? Which Amplification Path Wins for Scaling Next-Generation Subsea and Datacenter Networks

This workshop is organized into two parts, focusing on capacity scaling in submarine and terrestrial/datacenter applications, respectively.

In submarine systems, scaling beyond today’s two-core architectures is increasingly limited by amplification under strict constraints such as power feed, reliability, and gain management, leaving the next step in subsea amplification unclear.

Terrestrial and datacenter networks operate under looser constraints but face a widening design space, including growing interest in hollow-core fiber (HCF) and multiple fiber-type options that may change amplifier requirements.

For each application, the workshop compares two competing scaling routes:

• Spatial parallelism through SDM and multi-core amplification
• Spectral expansion through wider-band and multi-band amplification

The aim is to clarify when each path wins and what milestones are needed for practical deployment in next-generation submarine, terrestrial, and datacenter systems.