Overcoming the next hurdle to get to 800G pluggable optics, with Mark Nowell, 3 of 4

What are the industry’s technical experts in pluggable optics thinking about today? What are the technical boundaries that the smartest minds are pushing past to make the next generation of high speed optics? In episode 7, we continue a conversation with my esteemed colleague, Mark Nowell. In this third part of our four-part conversation we continue on the topic of thermal considerations, which he’s been thinking and writing about lately. Dr. Mark Nowell is a Cisco Fellow in Cisco’s Optics and Optical Systems Group. His focus is on next generation interconnect technology innovation to meet Cisco's needs. Mark is also active within the industry standards and forums and has chaired multiple IEEE 802.3 Ethernet projects. He represents Cisco on various industry alliances and consortiums. Mark also chairs a number of industry Multi-source Agreement groups focusing on next generation optical module form factors such as QSFP-DD and QSFP-DD800, and optical interface signaling technology like the 100G Lambda MSA. QSFP-DD Whitepaper, “Optimizing QSFP-DD Systems to Achieve at Least 25 Watt Thermal Port Performance” http://www.qsfp-dd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-QSFP-DD-MSA-Thermal-Whitepaper-Final.pdf Additional resources Cisco Optics blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at https://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CiscoOpticsBlog ) Cisco Optics Podcast episodes: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticspodcast Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics Timestamps 2:10 Importance of cost 2:44 The coherent factor 5:58 System design perspective 6:42 Why thermals are so important to the optics 8:18 How to cool 9:37 Cages 11:46 Naysayers Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com