LOS ANGELES -- OFC/NFOEC 2012 --
Where do you start when you're working on Terabit Ethernet? How about low-loss waveguides?
Researchers at the Terabit Optical Ethernet Center (TOEC) have made good progress there, as
Dan Blumenthal, the center's director, told Light Reading at the OSA Executive Forum Monday.
It could be a key element in terms of power savings. Something has to happen by about 2018, at which point the current hardware-building tricks will hit a wall in terms of power and heat, he says.
Blumenthal's Executive Forum talk also delved into the idea of crazy modulation tricks -- a WDM-like way of dividing a modulation space to create different application spaces. Certain parts of a QAM constellation could be reserved for guaranteed-bandwidth services or high-security traffic, for instance. It's a fairly new idea, and he talked only about the "what," not the "how."
Here's the interview we had with Blumenthal afterward:
For more
Catch up with all our OFC/NFOEC coverage at http://www.lightreading.com/ofc-nfoec.
And get some more background on TOEC by reading the OFC/NFOEC interview we did with Blumenthal last year.
— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading
