Shorten the Wire: Co-Packaged Optics and Silicon Photonics

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 28, 2026 · 1h

Data centre network architect Kasimir Oyelaran has one red cell in his AI campus spreadsheet: several megawatts of optical transceivers that will not fit under the grid limit. Photonics engineer Ilse Moravec says the electrons should not have to travel so far. In episode one hundred and forty five we follow that idea. We learn why a bit costs energy, why copper swallows high frequencies like curtains swallow a high voice, and how SerDes circuits fight back with PAM4, equalisers and error correction. We trace optics from Kao's glass fibre to the rack, praise the humble pluggable, and decode…