Lumentum: optics nears its biggest inflection in 30 years as it becomes part of the AI compute engine

pstAsiatech · x · 2026-09-16

SemiVision Research recaps Lumentum president Wupen Yuen's FIT Tech Day 2026 keynote, "AI: The Optics Era":

• Optics is shifting from a communication technology to a compute technology. For 30 years it stayed at the periphery of computing (long-haul telecom, metro, backbone, DCI); massive AI workloads are breaking that boundary.
• The network becomes part of the computer. When a single AI job spans tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and eventually over a million accelerators, optics naturally joins the AI compute engine itself.
• One continuous roadmap, not separate cycles. 800G, 1.6T, 3.2T, NPO, CPO, optical circuit switching, silicon photonics, and eventually optical I/O should be seen as stages along the same long-term roadmap — arguably optics' most important inflection point in 30 years.

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