The pluggable form factor is reaching some natural limitations. Although pluggable optics have been a foundational technology, they are hitting their natural limitations as speeds get faster. Starting with the 25.6Tb or 51.2Tb switch chips, we expect to start seeing co-packaged optics that we foreshadowed last year in pieces like our: Facebook Fabric Aggregator at OCP Summit 2018.
LWLG is perfectly positioned to exploit co-packaging!
ASM Q&A at about 1:01:01 Dr Lebby talks about how LWLG's technology is perfectly positioned for the Photonics Industry's rapid trend towards CO-PACKAGING
Listen to what Dr Lebby's said, "co-packaging is where you bring the optics right next to the electronic chip, the CMOS chip, in fact, you put it actually on the chip, so you want to make that inter-connect as short as you can, so that the interaction between the electronics and the photonics is as close as possible, and if you think about our technology for a second, we've got a spin-on polymer technology that you can spin on to IC's and CMOS, so we are ideally positioned to harness the co-packaging trend that is occurring, so yes, I am watching the competition in terms of the materials and the performance of the devices, but we're also watching how it gets packaged together, and we are actually ideally positioned for this new trend that's just occurring where other technologies are going to suffer, and so yes it's not just the materials, it's not just the device's but you have to look at the packaging too, and you have to look at where all the fronts are, and where the technologies are progressing and at what rate, and the conclusion is that mother nature is working with us on a number of different fronts, and that's really really exciting!"