LightCounting: Active optical cable market $192 million by 2013

DECEMBER 21, 2009 -- The active optical cable (AOC) market will predominantly use InfiniBand to interconnect supercomputer systems through 2012, according to the AOC report by LightCounting LLC. Other commercial protocols, such as Gigabit Ethernet, SAS, Fibre Channel, and PCI Express, will not reach significant volumes until 2012.

By 2013, the active optical cable segment will grow to $192 million, achieving 38.5% CAGR, with revenues split nearly evenly between higher volume 4-channel format and the higher priced 12-channel format. Consumer electronics interconnects, including optical versions of HDMI, DisplayPort, USB, and Intel's Light Peak, are not likely to achieve notable volumes until 2012.

"AOCs are positioned to become a disruptive force in telecommunications and datacom transceiver markets in the near future," said Brad Smith, senior vice president and lead analyst, LightCounting. "New manufacturing and device technologies developed in the AOC segment will spread beyond to other traditional transceivers products, enabling lower costs, increased features and performance, and AOCs will expand market opportunities for transceiver vendors by opening up new markets currently served by copper interconnects."

"Given the growing significance of the AOC market and the need to address the sometimes overblown claims circulating in the media regarding the impact of this segment on the wider market, we have chosen to add AOCs to our forecast," said Vlad Kozlov, CEO and founder, LightCounting. "Until the systems infrastructure has been created and the basic need to transfer information at speeds greater than 10 Gbps appears, however, AOCs will remain the purview of InfiniBand interconnecting supercomputers."

The AOC Report analyzes the profiles of key vendors, the forces driving AOC development, and the current statistics for AOC implementation and sales, with a forecast through 2013, broken out by 4-channel and 12-channel data rates. The report is available now.

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