$CIEN $SIVE CIENA: ENGINES WITH BUILT-IN LASERS RUN 30% WIDER AND 2X LONGER, SO TRUE CPO GOES WITH EXTERNAL LASERS Oct. 2 - Ciena ($CIEN) expects true co-packaged optics to run on external lasers, and its own 6.4T optical engine already does. "When you get to the true CPO architecture, I think that's almost for sure we'll use an external laser," Dan Harding, Ciena's vice president of engineering, said at an online forum hosted by Cignal AI on Sept. 18, the week before ECOC 2026. The replay went up Oct. 2. - Switch volume ahead: "over a million 100T and 200T switches deployed per year, starting in a couple years" - Ciena's engine: 6.4T, 32 x 200G, in-house silicon photonics, external light source - Modules with an integrated laser: "about 30% wider and about twice the length" - A 200T switch needs eight engines side by side, which he called "more problematic" with integrated lasers - Heat next to the optics: a main switch heat sink of 1,000 to 2,000 W - Connectorized NPO, he said, is headed for "a million plus style volume per year" "As people know, when you place lasers, lasers get hot," Harding said, and that is the trouble with putting them right beside a switch ASIC. The open OpenCPX connector standard he walked through is agnostic between external and integrated lasers, and he expects OEMs to ship boxes that support both, while Ciena has "always gone with ELS," the external light source. I lined his timeline up with the external-laser capacity already announced: $SIVE's Glasgow expansion, sized for more than 100 million CW DFB lasers a year, the continuous-wave type that feeds an external light source, is scheduled to come online in Q4 2027. Harding put the million-switch run rate "a couple years" out from Sept. 18, and the Glasgow line is set to start a few quarters ahead of it.