Herc, I 'follow' LUMM as an architect, as I do Brookham and others, to the extent that I am interested in seeing if they can make good on their miniaturization claims.
What do they do? I have been able to discern more from the LUMM threads both here in SI and on RB than from their own web site, thanks to Don J. and an individual who signs petabit, respectively, who post in those fora. Having said that, this is certainly no way to do diligence, I will admit, only a convenient glimpse into someone else's perspectives.
Beyond that, there have been a number of articles written, and some papers published, which begin to tell what they want to do (and have already commenced doing, according to some of their releases), but in my view, and while I remain optimistic for some of these startups, in all honesty I see the final verdict as still being out in deliberation, wrt who will be the first to market with such a revolutionary new scheme, and who will be effective in having their model followed throughout the industry.
In short, I am ill-prepared to say exactly what and how they do what they claim to do at this time, other than they portend to be able to reduce the footprint of dwdm elements to some fraction of their current size through their own proprietary chip technology.
Aside from this (or perhaps in conjunction with this), they appear to be proponents of plastic optical fiber, or POF, which, if and when POF is perfected, and in combination with the smaller form factors of their dwdm products, might lead to greater efficiencies in LANs and other close proximity networking designs of the future.
Prior to becoming aware of these startups, we had some earlier discussions both here in the LM, and elsewhere in SI (I believe MRVC was one such area), about the need for transforming many of the current purely electronic network elements into optically-based ones. I view the directions of these startups as characterizing the paths that need to be taken to that end. Whether it is LUMM, Brookham, or JSDU, or someone else, who will be the first to produce solutions on a widescale basis to this end, I wouldn't even venture to guess at this [Internet] time. They are all headed in this direction, to wit:
The only thing that I feel fully confident about in this regard is the direction we will see taken, and that is for the proliferation of smaller optical form factors and the ensuing enabling of optical networking schemes in spaces which have been, heretofore, purely the domain of all-electronic network elements and network protocols.
These advances will lead to some very profound implications, as we are now beginning to witness in an almost prophetic way, in metro dwdm situations where gigabit ethernet is seeing a renewed life.
The next steps will be into the building riser systems, the distribution closets, and ultimately either directly over fiber, or wireless extensions, to desktops and other appliances. HTH.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
