The annual Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) is undergoing a transformation. This top optical exhibition, once centered around the telecommunications industry, has now fully shifted towards AI infrastructure.
This year's conference is being held this week in Los Angeles, with giants like Corning, Cisco, Arista, Nokia, and Ciena showcasing a large number of new products, focusing intensely on one proposition: how to pack higher density fiber optics into smaller physical spaces to meet the bandwidth and low latency demands of AI data centers.
From booth layouts to product launches, the imprint of AI is everywhere. Brian Rhoney, Corning's Data Center Market Development Manager, stated, in the past, the company mainly showcased front-end networks at the conference, which are products that connect data centers and long-distance internet.
However, today, back-end networks, the connections between machines within data centers, have become equally important, if not more so. Brian Rhoney said:
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This year, it seems that everything has an AI story.
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An analyst at the media roundtable bluntly remarked:
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This has transformed from a telecommunications exhibition into an AI exhibition.
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<h2>Density is Key: How Fiber Optics &#34;Fit&#34; into Smaller Spaces</h2>
At this year's conference, &#34;more&#34; is the keyword throughout: more bandwidth, higher density, smaller size.
Corning showcased side-by-side comparisons of traditional fiber optics packaged in plastic tubes with its new micro-cables (removing the plastic tube to save space). Brian Rhoney explained:
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Circular structures have low stacking efficiency, and in long-distance markets, pipeline space is already limited, so it is crucial to pack as many fibers as possible in limited space.
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Corning also highlighted its multi-core fiber technology, integrating four optical cores into a single fiber, rather than the traditional single-core design, achieving a leap in bandwidth.
Additionally, within data centers, Corning demonstrated high-density fiber wiring solutions used to connect servers to switch racks in server stacks.
At the switch level, Arista launched a brand new eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics (XPO) transceiver, a new type of pluggable optical module planned for mass production in 2027.
Arista claims that the XPO module can quadruple the bandwidth per rack compared to the currently widely used OSFP solution, while reducing the footprint of switch racks by 75%, and lowering data center power infrastructure, cooling, and piping costs, potentially saving billions of dollars in the construction of AI factories.
The multi-source agreement (MSA) supporting this solution has been endorsed by over 40 members and will be officially disclosed at this year's conference.
<h2>Power Consumption and Architecture: A Dual Breakthrough for Next-Generation Optical Networks</h2>
Reducing power consumption is another main theme of this year's conference, with multiple manufacturers highlighting significant energy savings as a product selling point.
Ciena showcased a new reconfigurable line system (Reconfigurable Line Systems, RLS) equipped with Hyper-Rail technology.
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This technology abandons traditional wavelength multiplexing methods and instead adopts &#34;fully-filled fibers&#34; for transmission, which can achieve up to 32 times density improvement between clusters and data centers, while reducing power consumption by up to 75% per rack.
Ciena stated that this technology is primarily aimed at the training networks of hyperscale cloud vendors, who are connecting multiple sites into distributed networks to support the ever-expanding AI models.
Additionally, Ciena showcased a new Vesta co-packaged optics (CPO) pluggable connector that can connect directly to switch ASIC chips, enhancing link rates while reducing power consumption.
Cisco launched the Open Transport 3000 series, claiming that the new system can reduce power consumption by 75% and improve rack space utilization by 80%.
This system packages multiple pairs of parallel optical fibers onto a single line card, supporting channel expansion from local switches to other racks and data centers, aimed at helping telecom operators and enterprises integrate multi-site resources to handle increasingly large AI models with a parallel distributed architecture.
Cisco also announced an additional 800Gb/s capacity for the NCS 1014 router and showcased coherent pluggable optical modules based on Acacia technology.
Nokia released a &#34;modular&#34; architecture based on new DSP and optical front-end components, covering coherent pluggable transceivers supporting long-distance and data center interconnects, short-range high-bandwidth optical connectors for enterprise and campus deployments, and dual-sided pluggable optical modules compatible with CPO, near-packaged optics (NPO), and linear pluggable optics (LPO) switches.
Nokia also introduced a passive optical network (PON) out-of-band management system named Aurelis, claiming it can reduce the number of switches required for the network by 90% while cutting energy consumption by 50%.
<h2>Hollow Core Fiber: From Laboratory to Large-Scale Deployment</h2>
Hollow-core fiber is one of the hottest topics discussed at this conference.
Unlike traditional optical fibers where light propagates through solid glass, hollow-core fibers allow light to propagate through a hollow glass core, significantly reducing latency. Corning's Brian Rhoney stated:
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Interconnectivity between data centers was previously limited by distance, but now more distant data centers can be connected.
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He acknowledged that hollow-core fiber is not a new technology, but after years of continuous improvement, &#34;it has now become practical, and there is high market activity around hollow-core fiber.&#34;
Corning has reached a partnership with Microsoft to provide manufacturing services for hollow-core fiber by September 2025. It is reported that Microsoft has also signed agreements with Corning and Heraeus Covantics to build a &#34;cross-national production supply chain&#34; to expand the global deployment scale of the next generation of optical fibers.
<h2>At the Component Level, CPO and High-Speed Transceivers Accelerate Deployment</h2>
In the field of optical components, Coherent, Lumentum, and Marvell disclosed multiple new product developments during the conference
Coherent released multiple co-packaged optical technologies, including a 6.4T slot-type CPO based on silicon photonics, paired with its self-developed high-power InP continuous wave laser external source module; a multimode slot-type CPO based on high-speed VCSEL; and a 400G InP modulator operating on a silicon substrate. Coherent's stock price rose about 1% during the midday trading.
Lumentum showcased several products aimed at AI and cloud data centers, including a 1.6T DR4 OSFP pluggable transceiver prototype using four 400G differential EML lasers, as well as an 800mW ultra-high power laser and a 16-channel DWDM ultra-high power laser.
Lumentum's Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Marketing Officer Rafik Ward stated:
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The company's product portfolio is designed to support the scale, speed, and efficiency required for next-generation AI and cloud data center infrastructure.
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Lumentum's stock price increased by about 4% on that day.
<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/b26f23ff-3f00-43bf-b987-316c039715d6.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/b26f23ff-3f00-43bf-b987-316c039715d6.png"/>
Marvell and Lumentum jointly demonstrated the Aquila 1.6T coherent-lite DSP, Ara 1.6T PAM4 optical DSP, and the interoperability demonstration of the COLORZ® 800 ZR/ZR+ DCI module with Lumentum's R300 optical circuit switching (OCS) platform.
Xi Wang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Marvell's Connectivity Business Unit, stated:
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This joint solution demonstrates how next-generation AI networks can achieve breakthrough improvements in performance, energy efficiency, and architectural flexibility
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The OFC Optical Fiber Communication Conference has officially transformed into an AI exhibition, with giants like Corning, Cisco, Arista, Ciena, and Nokia gathering in Los Angeles to engage in an arms race around higher density, lower power consumption, and smaller size optical fibers. Arista's new module can quadruple the bandwidth per rack and reduce the footprint by 75%; Corning's hollow fiber has moved from the laboratory to large-scale deployment, having signed a mass production contract with Microsoft last September. An optical revolution reshaping AI infrastructure is quietly accelerating

- The annual Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) is shifting focus from telecommunications to AI infrastructure, highlighting the need for higher density fiber optics to meet AI data center demands.  
- Key innovations include Corning's multi-core fiber technology and Arista's new XPO module, both offering significant enhancements in bandwidth and space efficiency.  
- Additionally, discussions on hollow-core fiber technologies indicate potential for reduced latency and expanded data center interconnections, while various companies showcase advancements in optical components to support AI networking.

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Optical Communication Conference (2026 OFC): The telecommunications conference has transformed into an AI conference, focusing on "how to fit higher density optical fibers into smaller spaces."