What are the industry’s technical experts in pluggable optics thinking about today? What boundaries are the smartest minds are pushing to make the next generation of high-speed optics? In Episode 5, we start a new conversation with my esteemed colleague, Mark Nowell, Cisco Fellow. We begin with his own background, and then explore a brief history of standards in pluggable optics.

– Pat Chou, Cisco Optics Product Manager

Dr. Mark Nowell is a Cisco Fellow in Cisco’s “Optics and Optical Systems Group.” His focus is on next generation interconnect technology innovation to meet Cisco's needs. Mark is also active within the industry standards and forums and has chaired multiple IEEE 802.3 Ethernet projects. He represents Cisco on various industry alliances and Consortium. Mark also chairs a number of industry MSA (Multi-source Agreement) groups focusing on next generation optical module form factors (QSFP-DD, QSFP-DD800) and optical interface signaling technology (100G Lambda MSA).

QSFP-DD Whitepaper, “Optimizing QSFP-DD Systems to Achieve at Least 25 Watt Thermal Port Performance”

http://www.qsfp-dd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-QSFP-DD-MSA-Thermal-Whitepaper-Final.pdf

Additional resources

Cisco Optics blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at https://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CiscoOpticsBlog )

Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen

Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics

Timestamps

2:40 Mark’s early education and career background

4:41 Joining Cisco

8:07 Ethernet standards bodies

10:57 IEEE standards process

13:13 The rise of consortiums and multisource agreements (MSAs)

15:14 Pluggable MSAs

16:18 100G optical MSAs

Music credits

Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html

Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com