Data Center Technology at the Crossroads

2023 PSC Annual Conference and Workshop

Photonics Society Of Chinese Heritage (PSC)

中華光電學會

Workshop description

Data center technology is entering a time of great change. After many years of headlong growth, the impetus for continued rapid progress is even stronger but there are now also unprecedented new options for direction. This workshop will explore a few of the most impactful roadmap choices the industry will have to make in the next three to five years.

Datacenter coherent: It is well accepted that coherent technology will spread to shorter and shorter reaches. Yet there are still issues to be debates as to exactly how different datacenter coherent can be from well-established long-haul coherent to hit target power and costs. Is O-band different enough? What exactly is coherent-lite?
Direct-drive optics: Perhaps the most startling new direction, a return to unretimed optics would be a complete turn-around from the historic trend to put more powerful DSP in the optics. What needs to be done instead and can it really extend to higher speeds like 200Gbps?
CPO/NPO/Chiplets: Until now, the electrical links inside the box to the optics have been so robust that the optics has been allotted most of the error budget for the link. Suddenly, at 200Gbps the electrical links are struggling. Can optics do more than box-to-box connections? Can optics alleviate the interconnect problems inside the box as well?
Thin-film Lithium Niobate: The historical direction has favored semiconductor materials and semiconductor style integration for all components, even favoring CMOS at the expense of III-V performance. TFLN revives a non-semiconductor material with new performance benefits and semiconductor-style processing. But what are the implications for integration with components other than modulators? What is required in investment to support an additional material in the ecosystem?

Registration & Social Networking (30 min)

Opening talk (15 min)

PSC Tingye Li Memorial Scholarship Announcement (15 min)

Panel Presentation & Discussion (70 min)

Closing Remark (15 min)

Dinner Gathering

Panel Speakers

Dr. Vlad Kozlov

"State of the industry and the new Cambrian explosion"

Founder and CEO, LightCounting Market Research

Vladimir Kozlov is the founder and CEO of LightCounting, which he set up in 2004. By now, LightCounting is the leading market research company covering the global communications industry, including optical and wireless networks.
Dr. Kozlov has more than 30 years of experience in optoelectronic technologies and devices, optical communications and market research. Dr. Kozlov held market analyst, product development and research staff positions at RHK Inc., Lucent Technologies and Princeton University. Dr. Kozlov holds several US patents and has numerous publications in the area of optoelectronics. He received M.Sc. at Moscow State University in Russia and Ph.D in Physics at Brown University in the United States.

Dr. Mian Zhang

"Progress of thin-film lithium niobate PIC technology"

Founder and CEO, Hyperlight

Mian Zhang is founder and CEO of HyperLight Corporation, a semiconductor company that provides end-to-end photonic integrated circuits solutions for optical communications with thin film lithium niobate photonics technology. Before founding HyperLight, Mian was a researcher at Harvard University, where he laid the groundwork in thin film lithium niobate photonics technology. Prior to that, Mian obtained his PhD of Applied Physics from Cornell University working in silicon photonics.

Dr. Cedric Lam

"The Next Generation Datacenter Optics: Coherent or IMDD"

Principal Engineer, Google

Cedric F. Lam is now Principal Engineer in the Google Technical Infrastructure team, where he is focused on the development of next generation datacenter networking architectures and interconnect technologies. He was a co-founder of the Google Fiber program which changed the landscape of broadband access networks in North America with the introduction of nationwide Gigabit FTTH networks. Before joining Google, Cedric worked at AT&T and Opvista, a DWDM startup company. He is a Fellow of Optica and a committee member of the Optica Corporate Engagement Council. He serves on many technical conference committees and the editorial board of the IEEE Communications Magazine. He also published two textbooks in fiber access networks.

Dr. Rebecca Schaevitz

"The Escape Density Solution: Silicon Photonics Chiplets in Package"

PLM and Principal Engineer, Broadcom

Rebecca K. Schaevitz is a Principal Engineer and Product Line Manager at Broadcom, where she focuses on bringing silicon photonics into mainstream networking and computing by both leading the development of optical connectivity solutions and defining the business case for products. Before joining Broadcom, she worked at Corning on active optical cabling, optoelectronic modules, and solutions for optical infrastructure in data centers. She has multiple patents, book chapters, and first author publications on optical technology. She earned her PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University focusing on silicon photonics modulation.

Mr. TingChiun(Tim) Lin

"CPO in system"

Director of Solutions Engineering, Ragile

Tim Lin is working at Ragile Networks for solutions department. He received his MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Engineering Management from University of Southern California. He has years network switch design experience and hardware program management experience.

Dr. David Piehler

"Linear, direct-drive, un-retimed pluggable optics – Too good to be true?"

Distinguished Engineer, Dell

David Piehler is a Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies' Infrastructure Systems Group where he focuses on high-speed inter- and intra-datacenter optical fiber transmission. Previous positions include Chief Scientist at NeoPhotonics (NPTN, acquired by Lumentum in 2022); Vice President, Broadband Access Networks R+D at Harmonic, Inc. (HLIT) and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley for research in nonlinear optics.

Photonics Society of Chinese Heritage (PSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promote friendships and collaborations among Chinese American engineers and scientists in the field of photonics so that they can enhance their professional and business contributions for better quality of life in this fast changing world.