Unlocking the Full Potential of Optical Interconnects
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Date: Tuesday, October 7th, 2025
Time: 11:00 AM ET
Duration: 1 Hour
Description:
The rapidly evolving landscape of frontier AI models is fueling relentless growth and complexity in data center workloads. The resulting challenges in optimizing performance, power and efficiency is driving the need for a new generation of high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects. As traditional semiconductor scaling slows, the reach limitation of electrical interconnects and the power and cost constraints of pluggable optics, re-timers, and active cables are limiting the performance of AI scaling. This webinar will provide a technical tutorial on the evolution of interconnects to meet hyperscale AI data center requirements. We will explore the shift to in-package optics, detailing the architectural differences between 2D- and 3D-integrated photonic solutions. We will discuss Lightmatter 3D co-packaged optics (CPO) and optical interposer implementations, highlighting the key differentiations in bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and latency. The session will conclude with a discussion about the key technical challenges and solutions in deploying these technologies at scale, including thermals, packaging integration, and mass production, drawing on insights from industry experts, recent development breakthroughs and other authoritative technical sources.
Who should attend?
Technical audiences in the hyperscaler ecosystem, including: Infrastructure and AI Model Architects, Silicon, EDA, OSAT Vendors and fabs, Switch and System Vendors, Datacenter Engineers and Decision Makers.
What will you learn?
- Trends in interconnect technology and hyperscale data center requirements
- Architectural shifts driving the need for photonic interconnects beyond the limitations of copper
- The fundamental differences between 2D, 2.5D, and 3D integration of optics and logic
- Key technical trade-offs of co-packaged optics (CPO) and active optical interposer designs
- How to assess performance, thermal, and packaging challenges for integrated optical solutions
- The state of the art in industry development, including recent research on Mixture of Experts (MoE) model training with 3D integrated optics
Speakers:
Cliff Grossner, Ph.D.
Chief Innovation Officer, Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP)
At the Open Compute Project Foundation, Dr. Grossner leads its market intelligence function and is responsible for driving awareness of OCP, training and certification programs, and guiding inventors presenting their early-stage company ideas to potential investors. Dr. Grossner has more than 25 years of telecommunications industry experience encompassing scientific research, market analysis, corporate and product strategy, product management and marketing. His current interests includeIT Ecosystems from cloud to the edge looking at the equipment [servers, IT networking and storage] and software, and physical infrastructure [power and cooling] needed for computation, with a focus on edge computing, silicon components included in IT equipment including coprocessors for AI and ML. Previously, Dr. Grossner was head of the Cloud and Data Center Research Practice, which he launched at Infonetics research and followed through transitions to IHS, IHS Markit and Informa Group. Prior to Infonetics, he held senior positions, including heading strategic marketing for Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise network business, tenures at Bell Labs, several startups and Nortel. He earned his Ph.D. at McGill University, and his Master of Science in Computer Science at Concordia University, winning national scholarships to support his graduate work. He holds more than 10 patents in computer networking, networking embedded security and telecommunications applications.
Sameh Boujelbene
VP, Ethernet Switch—Data Center and AI Networks for AI Workloads Market Research, Dell’Oro Group
Sameh Boujelbene joined Dell’Oro Group in 2011 and is currently responsible for the Ethernet Data Center Switch and AI Networks for AI Workloads market research. While at the firm, Ms. Boujelbene has expanded her research programs to ensure they are evolving to address data center interconnect, AI/ML workloads, and digital transformation. Ms. Boujelbene has published articles and has been cited in various industries and trade publications. Ms. Boujelbene is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
Ritesh Jain
Senior Vice President, Engineering & Operations, Lightmatter
Ritesh Jain is Senior Vice President, Engineering & Operations at Lightmatter leading cross-functional engineering organizations responsible for driving innovation and delivering products. Previously as VP at Intel, Ritesh led hardware development for data centers. He holds a master’s in semiconductor packaging and during the two plus decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, he drove several generations of data center products into high volume deployments while driving major technology transitions and leading global engineering teams.
Steve Klinger
VP of Product, Lightmatter
Steve Klinger is VP of Product at Lightmatter, the company that invented the world’s first 3D-stacked photonics engine. Prior to joining Lightmatter, Steve served as VP of Product Management and Applications at Innovium, a cloud data center Ethernet switch silicon company. He earlier served as GM of the infrastructure processor business group at Cavium, which specialized in accelerated networking and security processors. Steve also held marketing and applications engineering positions with network processor pioneer AMCC (MMC Networks) and Cypress Semiconductor, and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC Davis.