50 Years of Turning Optical Dreams into Reality

By _Cadence - Cadence IP Blog

April 21, 2016

Anaheim Convention Center (CA) was the center of a spectacle of technology that continues to impact our daily lives, culminating decades of innovation in communications computer imaging. There were 580 exhibiting companies, accompanied by more than 1,160 peer-reviewed papers and more than 13,000 attendees. This years’ edition of Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), the largest optical communications and networking conference, featured a wide range of important topics and intriguing solutions.

With fiber optic communications technology turning 50 and this year’s OFC drawing the most innovative names in telecom, optical communications, and datacom, the state of the industry can be described as very bright indeed. The guest of honor should have been Sir Charles Kao, 2009 Physics Nobel Prize winner. It was Kao who 50 years ago discovered that a laser beam traveling down a single strand of low-loss glass optical fiber has the ability to transfer the entire contents of a 1TB hard drive in about 31 miliseconds.

Evolution of datacenters, silicon photonics, software-defined networking (SDN), network speed and efficiency were the primary topics of this edition of the event. As Kathleen Tse, General Co-Chair of AT&T, put it: “OFC is the networking event of the year. It’s where the global community involved in optical and data networking comes together to take the pulse of the industry. This year was no exception. The event’s premier conference program reflects the hard work and dedication of many, including the technical program chairs, subcommittee chairs and committee members.

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