OFC 2024 Makes Its Return to San Diego

The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC), returning to the San Diego Convention Center March 24 to 28, will feature a hybrid format that allows attendees to see both in-person and virtual talks. Those who attend in-person will be able to explore an event hosting more than 13,000 participants from more than 70 countries and featuring more than 540 companies on the exhibition floor.

The live event’s multitude of displays and highlights will revolve around three exhibition hall theaters showcasing expert presentations on hot topics such as PICs, cloud and edge computing, and how mobile optics will be used in 6G.

Among the highlights is a plenary session on March 26 that will feature three industry leaders, starting with Anita Döhler, CEO of the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance, who will discuss how 6G technology promises to affect networking. Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet and scientific networking division director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, will follow with a presentation on transforming science through connectivity. Rounding out the plenary session will be David J. Richardson, a partner researcher at Microsoft, co-author of more than 500 journal papers, and a holder of more than 20 patents. Richardson will speak on emerging fiber technology for future optical networks.

Image courtesy of Optica.

Accompanying the exhibit, OFC’s five- day technical conference will feature more than 20 live demonstrations, along with several tutorials, more than 50 short courses, five symposia and special sessions, nine industry panels, and 12 interactive workshops. Topics of discussion will range from deep technological dives into optical network- ing components and systems, trends influencing data center interconnects, fiber sensing, and satellite communications.

Notable among these events are the Open Networking Summit, which will discuss what’s next for open and disaggregated optical networks, and the ever thought-provoking and crowd-provoking rump session on March 26 that, this year, will probe the question: “How much optics does AI need?” The organizers of this highly anticipated session include founder and CTO of Nubis Communications, Peter Winzer, AIST research director Shu Namiki, and Laurent Schares, senior research scientist at IBM.