Packaging and test account for up to 80% of silicon photonics cost. At OFC 2026, FormFactor showed a fully automated measurement platform using its Pharos lens and 3D beam algorithms to sharply improve wafer-level test repeatability and efficiency for AI data center interconnects.

From 15 years at 10G to 4 years at 1.6T, the time for a data-rate generation to reach 10 million units has been cut again and again. At ECOC 2026, Lumentum laid out the numbers: half of module power goes to the DSP, only 24% of that DSP computes — and the real volume bottleneck is plugging in fibers.