Executive Summary

The IOWN Global Forum capped a year of online member engagement with its final Member Meeting of 2021, the October 2021 Member Meeting, which took place on 6-8 October 2021. The latest virtual gathering reported on IOWN Global Forum’s progress in recent months and featured many member presentations and interactive discussions on critical industry topics.

Continuing a trend of meeting-over-meeting growth, the October Member Meeting exceeded prior attendance. It reached record high numbers with representation from 14 different countries, more than 70 member companies, and nearly 500 individuals from IOWN Global Forum in attendance.

Members were welcomed by IOWN Global Forum President and Chairperson Katsuhiko Kawazoe, Executive Vice President, Head of Research and Development Planning, NTT Corporation, during the opening remarks.  He expressed his deep gratitude for the continued successes and increasing member participation in growing technological innovation amongst the IOWN Global Forum community. And he exemplified “NTT Green Innovation Toward 2040” and emphasized that our collaboration with a shared vision, collecting knowledge and efforts can accelerate to achieve a sustainable world globally since individual companies and organizations can’t create a sustainable world.

Opening Keynote

Hiroshi Shiragami, Ph.D., Executive Officer & Senior Vice President of Ajinomoto Corp., delivered the opening keynote presentation, “Ajinomoto Group’s Challenges to Resolve Food and Health Issues Towards the Better Well-Being of the Generations to Come.”

Dr. Shiragami shared the Ajinomoto Group’s vision to contribute to greater wellness for people worldwide, unlocking the power of amino acids to resolve the food and health issues associated with dietary habits and aging. Dr. Shiragami discussed the digital transformation model and goals, plus work to design the future through innovation in a “digital twin” world to contribute to society’s sustainable food system and well-being. Further, he discussed how the Ajinomoto Group would contribute to IOWN Global Forum’s vision by providing innovative materials, such as sensor materials, adhesives functional materials, and optical waveguide materials; the company’s contribution to reducing environmental loads; and sustainability initiative and vision outcomes and materiality.

IOWN Global Forum Updates: Working Group Activity Report

Katsutoshi Itoh, Use Case Working Group Chair​, and Masahisa Kawashima, Ph. D., Technology Working Group Chair provided brief updates on recent progress made on key milestones within the IOWN Global Forum Working Groups. Mr. Itoh shared an overview and details of the upcoming use case documents, Cyber-Physical System (CPS) Use Case and the Artificial Intelligence-Integrated Communications (AIC) Use Case, to be released in October 2021 and appreciation of the participation of members in this work, which is now publicly available on the IOWN Global Forum.

Dr. Kawashima reiterated the IOWN Global Forum Vision for 2023, focused on cognitive and communication capacity, response speed, scalability in computing and energy efficiency, and noted that IOWN Global Forum continues to work towards this vision with upcoming deliverables designed to enable proof of concept activities, testing and benchmarking, and engagement of potential early adopters.

New Company Introductions

Following the Working Group Activity Reports, the following 22 new IOWN Global Forum members shared brief introductions on their company, colleagues participating in the IOWN Global Forum and areas of particular interest within the industry.

Sponsor Members: KIOXIA Corp., PwC Japan and Samsung Electronics

General Members: Advantest Corp., AIOCORE, DIC Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Honda Tsushin Kogyo Co., Ltd., IBIDEN Co., Ltd., I-PEX Inc., MIRISE Technologies Corp., OKI Electric Industry, Peers Co., Ltd., Santec Corp., Sumitomo Corp. Kyushu Co., Ltd., Toyo Ink SC Holdings Co., Ltd. and UNIADEX Ltd.

Academic/Research Members: The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, the Photonics Electronics Technology Research Association, the Photonics Industry & Technology Development Association and Tohoku University

Research Workshop

Day two began with a Research Workshop organized around the theme, Photonics-electronics convergence technology for low-power-consumption data-driven information processing networks, kicked off by an introduction and overview of the topic by Masahito Tomizawa, Ph. D. Vice ​President, Head of NTT Device ​Innovation Center​ and Akira Okada, Ph. D., Vice President, Head of​ NTT Device Technology Laboratories.

The workshop featured the following presentations: “Copackaged Optical IO: Back-compatible or Disruptive?” by Stephen B. Alexander, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Ciena; and “Innovation Lights Up Future Optical World,” by Dr. Jin Hong, Vice President, Network & Edge Group General Manager of R&D, Silicon Photonics Product Division, Intel.

In “Innovation Lights Up Future Optical World,” Dr. Jin Hong, VP & GM of R&D, Intel Silicon Photonics Product Division, highlighted the successful product transformation from 100G to 200G, 400G, 800G recently to the next-gen coherent pluggable transceivers for datacenters and beyond in the next few years,  as well as the new opportunities and challenges in the industry, including silicon photonics LiDAR for autonomous driving, optical IO for the elimination of connectivity bottleneck in compute, co-packaged optics and more. While integrated photonics scales well with the complexity of applications, there are many unknowns yet to be discovered. Dr. Hong noted that the golden age of photonics is now, as more investment and collaboration are fueling the relentless innovation across the industry.

Representative Meeting

Select member representatives convened for a Representative Meeting following the Research Workshop, open to all member companies and moderated by Dr. Gonzalo Camarillo. The Representative Meeting included a recap of the prior Representative Meeting and progress made on key initiatives. It also included a discussion on the vision for IOWN technologies, in that it will contribute to securing the resilience of our society against severe natural disasters in the context of the coherence among Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation, and Sustainable Development and related technology issues.

Member Presentations

IOWN Global Forum was pleased to welcome several members to present on Day 3 of the Member Meeting.

Mike Geyer, Product Manager, Omniverse Manufacturing Solutions, NVIDIA, discussed the topic, “Virtual Worlds to Demonstrate the Future – Approach to Digital Twin Computing,” and the exciting new ways of working and challenges digital twin computing creates. Mr. Geyer provided insight into Nvidia’s Omniverse, an open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation, and impacts on AI, robotics, manufacturing and more.

In the presentation, “Information Products by the MP-PAWR Data to Users in Real-Time – Expectations for Meteorological Applications of IOWN,” Dr. Koyuru Iwanami, Director-General, Research Center for National Disaster Resilience, NIED, shared an update on recent advancements in meteorological technology enabling more accurate prediction of weather in the future. It is expected that ultra-high-speed data processing and communication will deliver and demonstrate appropriate weather information to disaster response organizations, individuals and connected autonomous vehicles, improving society’s resilience to meteorological disasters. Dr. Iwanami shared the example of MP-PAWR, multi-parameter phased array weather radar.

Lieven Levrau, Senior Director, Optical Networking Strategy, Nokia, discussed “Deterministic Service Delivery Impacts on the Network Infrastructures and Edge Clouds.” Mr. Levrau shared an overview of the deterministic service fabric, how it can be solved from a geographical and technological point of view, i.e., where do we put the network elements, and with what functionality, and how are these interconnected. Mr. Levrau looked at the road ahead, including technological vectors, such as ultra-reliable communications and soft and hard isolation, and cloud governance, such as which regulations apply when data is stored at a company site, and ownership, including control and maintenance.

In the presentation “High Volume Test Challenges for Co-Packaged Optics Devices,” Daisuke Watanabe, Department Manager, Technology Development Division, ADVANTEST, covered topics such as switch bandwidth and transfer density, noting an extreme scale switch system is indispensable for the world of IOWN technologies, findings on co-packaged optics enabling high-density interconnectedness, testing heterogeneous packaging devices, and more.

Closing Remarks

To conclude the IOWN Global Forum Member Meeting, Mr. Shingo Mizuno, Director of IOWN Global Forum from Fujitsu, shared Closing Remarks. He expressed appreciation for all speakers and members who attended the Member Meeting for the stimulating presentations and interactive discussion throughout the week.

Mr. Mizuno noted that IOWN Global Forum welcomes more members from the industry and research fields, continues to liaise with other standards bodies and industry leaders and acknowledged the work of the IOWN Global Forum on the use cases. Mr. Mizuno emphasized that IOWN technology has the power to help transform society for the better and that data and technology will drive business and society in the future. In closing, Mr. Mizuno shared a final appreciation for all the members’ contributions to the IOWN Global Forum, their attendance at the meeting, and their continued vision of moving forward together!

All presentations from the Member Meeting are now available, to all IOWN Global Forum members, via the Member Platform. If you are interested in becoming a member, learn how to join today. We thank you all for your support and involvement in making this Member Meeting such a success, and we look forward to future Member Meetings with IOWN Global Forum colleagues.