Just a few quick notes today from the airport, thanks to wireless snafus at my hotel...

There was no escape from 40G/100G at the show this year, so after a look at other areas yesterday, it's back to high-speed technology. With the arrival of 40G coherent technology on the market, the question of where the various modulation form factors will find success arises. As a supplier of receiver technology for DPSK, DQPSK, and DP-QPSK (100G now, 40G-specific in the future), u2t Photonics is in a unique position to comment Andreas Umbach at the u2t booth said he believes DPSK will triumph in the long haul, with coherent and DQPSK battling it out for shorter links. In addition to the company's receiver technology, Andreas was proud of new modulators based on GaAs. The technology enables small package sizes...

GigOptix, meanwhile, showed off its new modulator technology that leverages polymer. Those package sizes are even smaller. The company also displayed technology that could be applied to whatever will come after 100G coherent...

CoreOptics basked in the glow of the success of its coherent 40G modules, based on technology it calls CP-QPSK. Saeid Aramideh, between sips of champagne served in honor of his birthday Thursday, expressed confidence that coherent will dominated future 40G applications. In the CoreOptics booth, a CP-QPSK in a Nokia Siemens Networks platform was part of a working demo. (The recently announced Columbus Networks 40G deployment did not use this technology, NSN said.) A static demo showed the same module in a Cisco ONS 15454 MSTP M6 platform. The company has a Japanese customer Saied says he was not allowed to name. (Hmmm...did a Japanese company recently make a 40G coherent announcement?)

After the show, Clariphy, which has made a name for itself in 10G EDC, talked about its work with Mintera on the latter's upcoming 40G module. As noted, the trick with coherent is the high-speed receiver electronics, and ClariPhy and Mintera found the former's mixed signal and DSP expertise a good match for Mintera's algorithm IP and related skills. Mintera will have initial exclusive rights to the resultant chip (Mintera plans to have the 40G coherent product available by the end of this year, says company head Terry Unter), but ClariPhy honcho Paul Voois says the chip will be available on the open market at some point next year.

Needless to say, there was a lot more going on (you have to test all this technology, for example), so you can expect more about the show next week. Meanwhile, it's time for a trip to Starbucks before my flight leaves.