NEWS & BUSINESS
Ethernet transceiver sales rise with more to come - report
later, SiP-based products account for less than 20% of optical transceiver sales, but adoption of this technology is finally accelerating. The company says that it is certain that customers will start evaluating CPO as soon as it is available, and very likely that Cloud companies and very large enterprises will make limited deployments of CPO in 2025-2026, but massive adoption of CPO may have to wait until well after 2026. Pluggable optical transceivers are set to remain the dominant solution for Ethernet connectivity for the next 5 years and probably for a lot longer than that.
LightCounting’s latest High Speed Ethernet Optics Report says that sales of Ethernet optical transceivers set a new record in 2020, reaching US$3.7 billion – up 33% from a slow 2019, when the segment declined by 18%. Suppliers of optics recovered promptly in Q2 2020 from the disruptions caused by COVID-19, and demand for all products ranging from 1GbE to 400GbE exceeded expectations for 2020 in total. Sales 400G and 2x400G (800G) modules will sustain the growth of the global market for Ethernet
consumption, end users have to accept CPO as a viable approach for continuing cost reduction. Facebook and Microsoft advocate for creating a new eco-system around CPO and industry standards for manufacturing optical engines, but initial products will be based on proprietary designs. This will be a significant barrier for the largest customers that are spending US$0.5 billion or more on optics annually. It adds that in 2010, some analysts predicted that Silicon Photonics (SiP) would replace all other optical chip technologies in the next 3 years. A decade
transceivers in 2021-2026 at a CAGR of just above 10%. Sales of 100GbE modules are projected to remain steady at just above US$2 billion per year. The total market for Ethernet connectivity is projected to reach US$6.8 billion in 2026, not including sales of optics co-packaged with switching ASICs, called Co-Packaged Optics (CPO). LightCounting says that CPO is an exciting technology, but it is important to set realistic expectations for its adoption by the market. Apart from numerous manufacturing challenges and meeting the targets set for lower power
NeoPhotonics demo’s 400 Gbps over 800km
Aqua Comms taps Ciena for 2x subsea capacity
NeoPhotonics Corporation has demonstrated that its 400ZR+ QSFP-DD coherent pluggable transceiver can effectively transmit at a 400 Gbps data rate over a distance of 800 km in a 75 GHz-spaced DWDM system with more than 3.5 dB of OSNR margin in the optical signal. The transceiver module is based on NeoPhotonics high- performance coherent optics and its ultra-pure colour tuneable laser, and achieves a reach of 800 km while staying within the power consumption envelop of the QSFP-DD module’s power specification. This 800 km transmission
Ireland-based Aqua Comms has upgraded its two Trans-Atlantic submarine cable routes with Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution to meet digital connectivity demands across the US, Ireland, Denmark, and the UK. The Aqua Comms network serves global data centres, cloud-based networks, and internet content providers. Aqua Comms is also utilising Ciena’s technology to enhance the 7,650 km AEC-2 network to support up to 500G Trans- Atlantic channel rates and the introduction of
demonstration was carried out on NeoPhotonics Transmission System Testbed and utilised 75 GHz spaced channels. The QSFP-DD uses NeoPhotonics Silicon Photonics based Coherent Optical Subassembly (COSA) and its ultra-narrow linewidth Nano-ITLA tuneable laser. The longer reach was enabled by the superior performance of these optical components along with a commercial digital signal processor (DSP) using proprietary forward error correction (FEC). The company expects these modules to be generally available within the second quarter of 2021.
spectrum sharing and backhaul capabilities for its customers. Aqua Comms owns two major subsea networks: AEC-1 that connects the US, Ireland, the UK, and AEC- 2, which connects North America with Scandinavia, Ireland and the UK. With Ciena, the AEC-1 path, that spans 5,521 km and connects New York to Ireland and the UK, has been completely modernised and upgraded to support 400GbE services leveraging Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e), doubling the cable’s capacity to almost 20Tbps.
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Q1 2021
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