CIR: Optical interconnects a $3.5 billion market in 2015

MAY 10, 2010 -- Market research and analysis firm CIR predicts in a new report, New Revenue Opportunities for Optical Interconnects: A Market and Technology Forecast, that revenues from optical interconnect products will exceed $3.5 billion by the year 2015.

While copper has had a stranglehold on both computing and networking equipment applications, moving forward, CIR believes that it will be unable to re-invent itself quickly enough to support all of the advances in these applications. With each new generation of copper interconnects comes the need for more sophisticated digital signal processing, which becomes more costly in several ways -- dollars, power consumption, and space, says CIR. This is clearly not a direction in which either end users or OEMs want to move, the company asserts.

Optical integration is what CyOptics is doing in its Terapics project and Intel is trying with silicon photonics, CIR points out. However, optical integration still has a long way to go and there are many opportunities open with regard to chip design and materials used. CIR also sees considerable opportunity in the realm of quantum dot (QD) lasers. These are gradually becoming available and could enable chip-to-chip and on-chip optical interconnection, says CIR. The company’s report states the industry could be on the cusp of transformation for board-to-board, chip-to-chip, and on-chip applications with recent developments such as the Avago MicroPOD, Luxtera OptoPhy, and Intel Light Peak as well as advances by QD Laser.

The volume opportunity for optical interconnects over the next five years will still be LC-to-LC jumpers in rack-based applications, the report states. There will also be healthy growth for MPO-to-LC and MPO-to-MPO assemblies.

This report is intended to provide in-depth analysis of optical interconnect markets and technologies. The study focuses on likely new business opportunities for components including cable assemblies, chip-to-chip, on-board, cable, and connectors, as well as subsystems and modules firms using or selling optical interconnects.

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