Drive to 100G boosts worldwide Ethernet controller and adapter market: Dell’Oro

Dell’Oro published an update to its Ethernet Controller & Adapter 5-Year Forecast Report that projects a 4% CAGR from 2020 to 2025, reaching nearly $3.2 billion. The increase is partly driven by the migration to server access speeds of 100 Gbps and higher.

While 25-Gbps port shipments have been strong, displacing 10 Gbps to dominate revenues, Dell’Oro projects that 100- and 200-Gbps speed ports will overtake 25-Gbps ports in revenue as early as 2023. The drivers include the demand for higher server access speeds by major U.S. cloud service providers who have already deployed 50-Gbps ports.

Higher server access speeds of up to 200 Gbps, based on two lanes of 112-Gbps SerDes, are also ramping up as networks contemplate upgrades to 800 Gbps around 2022. Finally, an increase in demand for bandwidth-hungry AI applications continues to push the boundaries of server connectivity. Dell’Oro believes major cloud service providers will likely want to connect accelerated servers at twice the data rate of standard connections for general-purpose applications, moving from 100 Gbps to 200 Gbps.

Dell’Oro’s Ethernet Controller and Adapter 5-Year Forecast Report provides analysis of the market with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue; average selling prices; and unit and port shipments by speed (1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps, 40 Gbps, 50 Gbps, and 100 Gbps) for Ethernet and Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE) controllers and adapters. The report also covers Smart NIC and InfiniBand controllers and adapters.

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