One more quick update on this. Below is the speaker list for the OFC conference:
Matt Mitchell, vice president, Optical System Architecture to speak on “To serialize or not to serialize? Practical approaches for coherent transmission at and beyond 400G,” Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 3:30PM.
Magnus Olson, Infinera Metro Business Unit, to speak on “How will Optical Technologies Support Wireless Communications in 5G and beyond,” Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 3:30PM.
Parthiban Kandappan, senior vice president, Systems Architecture to speak on “Network evolution paths: From integrated super channels to high-speed single-carrier networking solutions,” Monday, March 21, 2016 at 4:00PM.
Dr. Kuang-Tsan Wu, Infinera Fellow, to speak on “Real World Experience in Flexible Coherent Systems Deployments,” Monday, March 21, 2016 at 1:30PM.
Dr. Dave Welch, Infinera co-founder and president, to speak on “White Box Optical Transport: What’s the right approach?,” Tuesday, March 22 at 12:00PM (private event restricted to press and analysts)
Parthiban Kandappan, senior vice president, Systems Architecture to speak on “Integrated (Black Box) vs. Disaggregated (White Box) Networking,” Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 7:30PM
Dr. Kuang-Tsan Wu, Infinera Fellow, to present a tutorial talk, “On Coded Modulation for Optical Transmission," Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 8:00AM.
Scott Jackson, Infinera vice president, Subsea Business Group to speak on “Convergence between Submarine and Terrestrial Networks,” Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 10:00AM
Stu Elby, senior vice president, Datacenter Technology to speak on “Requirements of Inter Data Center Networks to Meet the Explosive Growth of Cloud Services,” Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 1:00PM
Vinay Rathore, director, Technical and Field Marketing, to moderate “Panel IV:The Global Colocation Market – Are Worlds Colliding?,” Wednesday, March 23, 3:30 - 5:00PM
Pierre Mertz, Infinera Distinguished Engineer, to present a poster on “Capacity Improvement Using Dual-Carrier FEC Gain Sharing in Submarine Optical Communications,” Thursday, March 24 at 10:00AM
PIC Workshop OFC 2016
Fred Kish, Infinera senior vice president, to present on Wednesday, March 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center at a PIC Workshop on “PIC Users Who Share Their Experiences,” at 7:40PM
This conference is mostly educational and informative and designed for those in the industry. However, Dave’s talk is not intended for the industry at large, but rather it is only available to the press and analysts.
More clues.
This makes me think either 1) Dave is the one who will provide technology announcement around Infinite Capacity Engine or 2) they’ll have a press release on Infinite Capacity Engine when the conference takes place, and then use this time for Dave to discuss further and address questions. The title of his talk is “White Box Optical Transport: What’s the right approach?”. This may be another clue about what Infinite Capacity Engine is all about. I ask myself again why the talk is for the press and analysts only? Something must be brewing!!
Again - hunches. But again, to re-iterate what Tom told us (below) I strongly believe we’re at least going to be told something. What exactly that will be is the part of my speculation, but is likely to involve “Infinite Capacity Engine” and will include some form of “leap forward” that “widen’s the gap” in technology.
Morgan Stanley analyst: When do you expect your 16QAM to be announced?
Tom: We’ve made one announcement - a vague announcement - around our optical portfolio. You’ll see us make more, less vague announcements at OFC.
We try not to talk too much about what we’re going to go do. I’ve had a couple of shareholders challenge me “Tom the world believes your leadership in this core technology (the PIC), that the gap has lessened.”
Shame on us, shame on me. We’ve kept quiet for too long.
Our gap has not shrunk, it has actually expanded. But nobody would know that because we haven’t talked about it. At OFC we’re going to fix that.
Best,
–Kevin