Recently, there are more and more software components in the products of an optical device company. They believe that the basis of network intelligence is software, and the increase in the proportion of embedded software is the development direction of optical devices and subsystems. Optical devices in the future will be part of the entire link and can realize self-awareness and self-control.

　　The software of optical devices gives a clear definition, that is, optical devices that can be flexibly customized. In the future, the function of the device will be defined by software and complete different functions according to software instructions.

　　The editor appreciates this definition, but can't help but ask whether optical device technology can meet this requirement. It should be said that the more complex the optical device, the greater the possibility of approaching this requirement. For example, current multi-rate application optical modules, such as reconfigurable ROADMs, partially fulfill the software-defined requirements. In the optical device industry, the most well-known company that proposes flexible optical devices is JDSU. They have introduced flexible optical device products for different application needs many years ago. But even so, this is still a long way from true software definition. In the editor's opinion, many optical devices based on traditional optical technology are difficult to implement software customization, and even if part of it can be implemented, it cannot be integrated.

　　The softwareization of hardware products means the intelligentization of hardware products, which means more flexible hardware and hardware that can be defined. The optical device industry should work hard for this. Let optical devices and optical modules play a greater role.