The Advanced Photonics Coalition (APC) has validated several standards that it says should enable the ‘mass production’ of optical networking equipment. The announcement was made at the PECC Summit, as the industry faces risks of shortages of key components and materials.
A ‘Copper Wall’ Pushing Towards Optics
The development of artificial intelligence is increasing the required data rates, but the reach of copper decreases as these rates increase, while heat emissions and energy consumption rise. This is what the source describes as the ‘copper wall’. For data center operators, photonics, which transmits data via light, is presented as a way to deliver more information to their expensive GPUs, while consuming less energy and producing less heat.
Consulting firm McKinsey, cited by the source, also ranks networking among the areas that ‘require improvements’. It recommends deploying switches integrating optics, called CPO (co-packaged optics), and advocates for ‘open interconnection.’
Components Under Pressure
The sector, however, is struggling to keep up with demand. Lumentum Holdings told Bloomberg that its optical components were ‘completely sold out’ until 2029, and that it would not be able to meet demand for some products between now and 2028, according to the source. The company manufactures components based on indium phosphide, a material essential to photonics. China is a major producer, adding a geopolitical dimension to the supply chain.
Lumentum is among the backers of Nvidia, whose founder and CEO Jensen Huang presented the Spectrum X technology based on integrated optics at the GTC conference. ‘We now have extremely high-rate, extremely good-quality data coming directly onto the chip,’ he said, adding that this data goes directly into the transceivers, without going through a circuit board.
The APC standards cover CPO system architecture, recommended practices, test methods for silicon photonics, a specification for a four-core multicore fiber cable, and silicon photonics manufacturing specifications. According to the organization, they aim to ‘eliminate implementation variations that add no market value’ and enable a more open supply chain. Publisher Resolight is among the companies in the APC working group. Its CEO, Ofer Shapiro, believes that the nanosecond-scale optical switching it is developing is supported by these standards. He summarized the situation as follows: ‘The easiest-to-procure and greenest transmitter is the one you don’t need.’
Finally, Digital Realty’s CTO, Chris Sharp, told the BBC: ‘I think we’re at the end of copper.’
