As the industry heads to Copenhagen for Europe’s largest fiber optics event, Acacia is excited to kick off the show with a plenary speech by its co-founder Benny Mikkelsen, who coincidentally hails from Denmark and holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. This is Benny’s second industry plenary talk, having had the honor at OFC 2019. He has also published more than 200 papers and conference contributions in letters, journals, and conferences.

At OFC 2019, Benny predicted some of the key advances that occurred in the industry over the last 6 years, including:

  1. Higher performance coherent implementations pushing the Shannon Limit
  2. High speed 400G and 800G moving into smaller pluggable form factors that require very low power DSPs
  3. 100G moving into a very small power envelope to support access and 5G applications

As a well-known visionary in the field of optical communications, Benny’s ECOC plenary talk and other presentations from Acacia executives at the show will highlight some of the following trends and how coherent technology may evolve in the future.

Optics in AI
The entire telecommunications industry is working to address the tremendous bandwidth demands driven by artificial intelligence. Acacia’s coherent modules are already being deployed in today’s AI build outs and customers are projecting increasing bandwidth requirements in the future which will be addressed with next generation modules such as 800ZR/ZR+ and 1.6T MSA pluggables. In addition, Acacia’s expanded line of client optics components deliver the higher-bandwidth, lower power and smaller footprint required for even the most demanding AI workloads.

The Expansion of Pluggables
Coherent pluggable performance has been rapidly improving, which opened new markets that can now benefit from the economies of scale that pluggable optics offer. As a pioneer of coherent pluggables, Acacia’s Delphi-powered 400G, 800G ZR/ZR+ and 400G Ultra Long Haul modules (ULH) have expanded use cases from the initial DCI target into shorter reach campus and access applications, long-haul and subsea. As an example, AArnet and GÉANT are just the latest network operators to achieve reaches beyond 3000km using 400G ULH coherent pluggables.

The Future of Performance Optimized Coherent
Acacia was the first to offer a performance optimized coherent pluggable module with the 1.2T CIM 8. Multiple compact modular platforms in the industry have adopted CIM 8 and the modules are currently being deployed in significant volumes in service provider and webscale customer networks.

ECOC 2025 Speaking Sessions and Demonstrations
In addition to the Plenary talk, Acacia will also present in the Market Focus theater, participate in key industry interoperability events, and demonstrate some of its latest technologies.

– Workshop 10: High Symbol-Rate Transceivers – How to Get to the Pinnacle of Performance?

  • Speaker: Christian Rasmussen, CTO and VP at Acacia
  • Date/Time: Sunday, September 28, 14.00-17.30
  • Location: Auditorium 12

– Plenary: Coherent Optics: Powering the Next Decade of Optical Communications

  • Speaker: Benny Mikkelsen, SVP and GM at Acacia
  • Date/Time: Monday, September 29, 9 – Noon
  • Location: Auditoria 10+11+12

– Market Focus presentation: AI is Driving Architectural changes in the Data Center and Beyond.

  • Speaker: Tom Williams, VP of Marketing at Acacia
  • Date/Time: Tuesday, September 30, 13:20-13:35
  • Location: Market Focus Theatre

– Presentation: Single carrier Versus Multi-Carrier System Design for Next-Generation Pluggables: A Comparative Analysis of Pros and Cons

  • Speaker: Ahmad Awadalla, Coherent Optical Systems Design and Development
  • Date/Time: Thursday Oct. 2, 9:00 – 9:30 am
  • Location: B5 M1-4

– OIF Interoperability Demonstration (Booth #C3425)

  • Acacia will be participating in OIF’s multi-vendor interoperability event that showcases interoperability across key technologies, including 400ZR, 800ZR, Multi-span Optics, Co-Packaging, and Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS).

– Ethernet Alliance Interoperability Demonstration (Booth #C1419)

  • As AI workloads become more complex, the Ethernet Alliance’s multi-vendor interoperability efforts help ensure that network investments keep pace with evolving latency, performance, and energy efficiency needs. Acacia is demonstrating its 400G ULH and 800G ZR+ coherent interconnects, showcasing its unique position in enabling high-capacity coherent solutions.

Come See us!
If you are attending ECOC 2025 and would like to discuss any of these topics, contact us to request a meeting.