European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication 2026

  2. Programme
  3. Symposia

Symposia

Winning Interconnects for AI: Scale-Up & Scale-Out Technology Paths
Monday, September 21, 14:00–15:30, coffee break, 16:45–18:15

AI/ML growth is driving a surge in interconnect bandwidth as models and datasets scale and workloads become increasingly token-centric—reshaping system design. Modern systems have converged on a two-tier hierarchy: scale-up fabrics that tightly couple XPU, memory, and switching into a coherent “virtual XPU,” and scale-out networks that connect many scale-up fabrics across the data centre.

Organisers: Daniel Kuchta (Nvidia), Lidia Galdino (Corning), Connie Chang-Hasnain (Berxel), Julie Raulin (Adtran), Paul Gunning (British Telecom)

Confirmed speakers:

  • Fotini Karinou, Microsoft Azure - (Title: TBC)
  • Peter Ossieur, IMEC - (Title: TBC)
  • Peter O'Brien, Tyndall National Institute - (Title: TBC)
  • Ryan Yu, TeraHop - "Open Optical Solutions for AI Scale Up"
  • Sylvie Menezo, Scintil - "Single-chip DWDM external DFB laser source with integrated wavelength monitoring and locking for scalable interconnects."
  • Jean Philippe Fricker, Cerebras - (Title: TBC)
  • Chris Wu, Corning - "Fiber Bundle Connector Solutions for VCSEL-Based Optical Scale-Up Interconnects"
  • Andy Bechtolsheim, Arista - (Title: TBC)
  • William Fegadolli, Nokia - (Title: TBC)
  • Manish Mehta, Broadcom - (Title: TBC)
  • Claudia Hössbacher, Marvell - (Title: TBC)
  • Ling Liao, Nvidia - "Optical solutions for scale-up and scale-out connectivity."

AI for 6G and 6G for AI
Tuesday, September 22, 14:00–15:30, coffee break, 16:00–17:30

The use of AI in society is exploding and quickly changing how businesses and public functions operate. It’s speculated that Generative AI could drive a 10x traffic growth in 6G mobile networks. This workshop will outline the background of such predictions.

Organisers: Stefan Dahlfort (Ericsson), Oskars Ozolinš (RISE/RTU), Philippe Chanclou (Orange)

Session 1: 14:00 – 15:30

Operator section – Moderator: Philippe Chanclou, Orange, France  14:00 - 14:45

  • Stefan Melin, "Towards 6G: Intelligent Optical Networks and Autonomous Transport Architectures" Telia Company, Sweden
  • Dr. Hirofumi Sasaki, “Photonics-Assisted RF Beamforming and Management for 6G and Beyond”, NTT, Japan
  • Lieven Levrau, “Coevolution of RAN and Optical Transport”, IOWN, Nokia, Belgium
  • Panel Operators: 14:45 - 15:00

Vendor section – Moderator: Stefan Dahlfort, MOPA, Ericsson, Sweden  15:00-15:30

  • Angelo Centonza, 3GPP RAN3 Vice Chairman, Ericsson, Spain
  • François Fredricx, MOPA Technical Committee Co-chair, Nokia, Belgium

 

Coffee break: 15:30-16:00

 

Session 2: 16:00-17:30

  • Fabio Cavaliere, Ericsson, Italy
  • Raza Khan. “How can optical solutions and components for 6G match the needs of AI?”, Semtech, Canada

Academia section – Moderator: Oskars Ozolins, RTU, Latvia  16:30-17:45

  • Roberto Gaudino, “Next-generation optical access networks and their possible impact on AI”, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  • Carlos Natalino Da Silva “6G transport networks for an agentic future: synergies and opportunities”, Chalmers, Sweden
  • Patryk Urban “Resiliency of fiber-optic access network in the 6G and AI era”, West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Poland
  • Christina Lim, University of Melbourne, Australia
Panel Vendors and Academia  17:15-17:30

ITU-T ION-2030: Architectures and Standards of Optical Networks for the AI Era
Wednesday, September 23, 9:00–10:30, coffee break, 11:00–12:30

AI workloads, IMT-2030 (6G) transport and hyperscale data-centre optics are converging, forcing networks toward 800G/1.6T interfaces, microsecond-level synchronization, deterministic latency, and stringent energy budgets.

Organisers: Raul Muñoz (CTTC), Xiang Liu (Huawei), Glenn Parsons (Ericsson)
The symposium will consist of two 90 minute sessions. Each session features six 10 minute presentations and includes a 30 minute panel discussion.

Session I (Mobile and Broadband Optical Access in the AI era)
  • Opening of the ITU-T ION-2030 symposium, Raul Muñoz (CTTC) and Xiang Liu (Huawei)
  • Introduction of the ITU-T ION-2030 framework, Glenn Parsons (Chair of ITU-T SG15, Ericsson)
  1. Optics for radio access towards 6G: challenges and opportunities, Fabio Cavaliere, Ericsson, Italy
  2. Status and evolution of optical access broadband, Philippe Chanclou, Orange, France
  3. Fiber sensing and mobile fronthaul in metro/access optical networks, Antionio Napoli, Nokia, Germany.
  4. AI-oriented broadband and home networks in the era of ION-2030, Liang Zhang, Huawei Technologies, China.
  5. Distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) industry standards and practical use cases, Jun Shan Wey, Verizon, USA.
  6. Broadband Access networks in an IA world, Marcos Martinez, Maxlinear, Spain.
  7. Panel discussion (All)
Session II (AI Datacenters and AI-ready optical networks)
  1. Framework and Requirements for AI deployment in Telco Transport Networks, Juan Pedro Fernández Palacios, Telefónica, Spain
  2. TBD, Chengliang Zhang, China Telecom, China
  3. Sustainable Optical Transport Architectures for AI: The F5G Advanced Perspective, Olivier Ferveur, Post Technologies, Luxembourg.
  4. Silicon photonics Optical switches for next gen AI datacenters, Daniel Pérez-López, Ipronics, Spain
  5. Optical interconnects for scaleup architectures and the standardization efforts, Fotini Karinou, Microsoft, UK.
  6. The current state of AI in Broadband today, and its role in the future, Martin Creaner, World Broadband Association
  7. Panel discussion (All)
  • Closing of the ITU-T ION-2030 symposium, Raul Muñoz (CTTC), Xiang Liu (Huawei) and Glenn Parsons (Chair of ITU-T SG15, Ericsson).

Programmable Photonics: Architectures, Control and Applications
Thursday, September 24, 9:00–10:30, coffee break, 11:00–12:30

Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) represents a paradigm shift from application-specific PICs to reconfigurable optical subsystems integrating hardware, electronics, and control algorithms.

Organisers: Wim Bogaerts (Ghent University–imec), Ioannis Tomkos (University of Patras)

Part 1. Chair: Ioannis Tomkos

  1. Wim Bogaerts (Ghent University, Belgium). “Introduction: The state of Programmable Photonics”
  2. Nicholas Harris (Lightmatter, US). "Photonics for AI Information Processing: Interconnect and Memory Bandwidth Before Computation"
  3. Keren Bergman (Columbia University, US). “Programmable photonics for AI clusters”
  4. Daniel Perez (iPronics, Spain). "Programmable photonics for Optical Switching"
  5. Bhavin Shastri (Queens University, Canada). "Programmable photonic Ising machine for combinatorics and optimization problems"
  6. Francesco Da Ros (Danmark University of Technology, Denmark). "Physics-Informed Machine Learning to model and compensate thermal crosstalk” 

Part 2. Chair: Wim Bogaerts

  1. David Marpaung (University of Twente, Netherlands). “Programmable Microwave Photonics”
  2. Shuang Zheng (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China) . “WDM-enabled Programmable Silicon Photonic Meshes for Parallel Optical Signal Processing”
  3. Andrea Melloni (Politecnico di Milano, Italy).  “Control and calibration of programmable photonic integrated circuits”
  4. Ioannis Tomkos (University of Patras, Greece). "Programmable Photonics for AI Interconnect Transceivers"
Panel session (30 mins).