From Jan 12, 2021...

Alexis is General Manager of the Optical Systems Division or OSD at Broadcom, where she is responsible for developing and manufacturing devices using optical communications, as well as developing Broadcom silicon photonics-based platform for interconnect and co-packaging optical I/O. 

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4398695-broadcom-inc-avgo-management-presents-j-p-morgan-tech-auto-forum-conference-transcript

Please have a good read of what is happening at Broadcom with their silicon photonics initiatives.

A couple of sentences made me go hummm.... In fact, below are some abstracts that I pasted from the article as re-read it over again !

In the past optics were thought of merely as the plumbing connecting everything all together, but now with the constraints on power and increasing bandwidth and performance requirements, the optical interconnect has become central to the data center design. Our customers are telling us that it’s not only driving their networking CapEx, but it’s actually a central and key factor in the design choices of the next-generation data center architectures.

Today, we’re introducing Broadcom’s first integrated silicon photonics solution

We have designed, just as Ram has done with the switch silicon, a purpose built silicon photonics platform, specifically driven for integration. It brings all the discrete elements of the ecosystem together onto a single silicon package with a unified architecture

Finally, we’ve addressed reliability and operational efficiency as a design priority, utilizing remote laser sources with no electrical connectors to ease the deployment and field serviceability of this new solution.

I can’t think of anyone else who has all of these capabilities and the ability to provide a disruptive new platform.

The results are absolutely compelling. By reducing our -- the power consumption in the system by 30% and improving rack density by 50%, and of course, offering a cost advantage of up to 40%, our customers will begin to view the interconnect not as a pain point, but rather as an enabler to facilitate new network architectures and continued growth in their services.

[the transceicers] dissolve, build, assemble and build in very low cost countries where they are much more efficient in building it, particularly places like China or Vietnam, Taiwan to some extent but largely China, where in fact some of the rock or roll like hardwires, sheet metal are even cheaper. There’s no business to compete in optical transceiver except the engine to drive those transceivers. Lasers, some of the key components like drivers, TIAs that may exist, but as a full assemble there isn’t.