I just finished listening to the the CEO discussion from Optica's Global Photonics Forum. I found it very interesting to get an idea of where photonics will be going over the next 5-10 years. Leaders from Coherent, MKS, Jabil and Micronics, who purchased Vanguard earlier this year to take advantage of Vanguard's advanced packaging solutions.
Themes that were discussed that AI is not viewed by them as a bubble and has a long runway to evolve.
Energy demand will be accelerating because of data usage going forward. Low power will be a theme for devices.
Photonics is seen as a necessity to further the evolution of what chips can do.
A very important theme was technologies to help chips to connect to one another much faster.
Advanced packaging solutions are being looked at to facilitate co-packaged optics.
The supply chain of needed supplies at the foundries and for packaging must be present. It sounded similar to what happened in the pandemic when a single simple item, if in short supply, interfered with the manufacturing of cars. It was emphasized that can not be allowed to happen and enough supply of critical materials must be available. Margins are tight and anyone who cannot cut costs through scale and efficiency drops out of the race. Eventually small companies get acquired or fail and the industry condenses down to a smaller number but a larger size group. Yes, at some point, we will be acquired.
Production in scale was mentioned as necessary numerous times. That is important for efficiency and cost containment and maintaining margins as LWLG hopes to enter the photonic food chain in scale and it won't happen until it appears ready to be able to do so (my thoughts).
MKS, Jabil and Micronics (who acquired Vanguard) made acquisitions to get into photonics. MKS added advanced packaging. Jabil bought Intel's transceiver business. Micronics bought Vanguard for advanced optical packaging. More in another post on that.
Scalability and being able to offer unique packaging solutions is seen as critical by this group.
There is so much going on in the industry, it is like a a lot of new technologies trying to get into the supply chain.
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