Understanding and optimising transceiver efficiency using internal metrics for improved power savings#

Dr Gerhard Stein (Flexoptix)

• Why: Power per port is becoming a first-order datacenter constraint and transceivers are a large, controllable share of it. This is one of the few talks showing a concrete, measurable method for cutting optical power without performance loss.
• What: A data-driven method using Versatile Diagnostics Monitoring (VDM) — internal transceiver telemetry available in modern >100G optics — to find operating conditions that minimise wattage. The event page summary confirms the analysis focuses on Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) current and laser current, correlated against temperature and total power draw. The authors built software prototypes and analyse real-world VDM data to evaluate and visualise transceiver efficiency in Watts.
• How: Correlation analysis of TEC/laser current against temperature (and cable length) to identify optimal operating points — essentially treating existing per-transceiver telemetry as a power-optimisation sensor rather than just a health alarm.
• Where applicable: Broadly applicable to any operator of >100G optics — the metrics are standard transceiver telemetry, not vendor-proprietary, so the method is replicable with any VDM-capable fleet. Caveat: results are prototype-stage from a transceiver vendor, so treat the savings claims as directional until reproduced on your own hardware.