lt cap,

Whilst I'm surprisingly able to understand the light reading links you often provide, I'm a bit unclear on the photonics 'breakthru' Intel is crowing about. Is the equipment in competition with other optical vendors, or complementary, or a 'step above' what everyone else is manufacturing? She seems to something about photonics being a step above SOC solutions (although maybe that's SDN, or maybe photonics is already part of where the industry is, this product just has some advantages - as per the joint project with InPhi, which makes obsolete a part of INFN's equipment package, giving it a software rather than hardware solution, if I understand that correctly - altho I know their range on that is currently quite short, 10km or so,  but I'd expect them to work on scaling the distance it's viable over time, if they can.)

In any case, the simpler, but more important questions seem to be: Who is Intel in competition with this technology, and how big a deal is that. And is it so great that it instantly changes the game. Unless I've got it wrong, I'm a bit proud that INTC is finding successful ways of diversifying away from PC CPU chips - I've heard that the rate of decline in PCs has slowed, but it means it's still going down. Also, I've read a little bit on their new SSD products that is supposed to be 40 (I think) times faster than current SSD capabilities (and yes, I understand that SSD isn't quite the right term for this memory - that really refers to present tech, if I've got that right. m.2 slots on a motherboard should bypass having to go thru the 6gb 'gateway' bottleneck at some point, increasing speeds of data processing enormously, for instance. I realize it may sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, and that may be the case, lol - I haven't read an article on the difference between the terms used to describe old and new memory, not to mention where Thunderbolt plays a part, that I find understandable so far.

Good questions Jamok.

INTC is in competition with component makers like OCLR, FNSR, LITE (former JDSU), ACIA (a module maker that also has PIC technology). 

Acacia is a company that is producing PIC (Photonics in Chip) just like INFN does, however, they do not build equipment around their technology, they sell their module to the likes of CSCO, JNPR, NOK etc.  Their technology is also behind INFN, if my knwodlege of the company is correct.  Their modules support up to 100GBps while INFN already has a 1.5 TBps module that will be incorporated in the Infinity Engine sometime in the near (?) future.