Market Research Report

Active Optical Cables Supercomputers-to-Smartphones And Everything in Between, Both Inside & Out 4th Edition
cover Published by Light Counting
Published Product code 233052
Price

Introduction

Abstract

This report examines the rapidly emerging product segment that embeds optical transceiver technologies into enclosed cables that hide the high-speed optics behind two transceiver ends with an electrical interconnect on the outside. This factor enables creating very high speed and high aggregate data rate links at costs significantly below that of two separate connectorized transceivers and fibers.

This report presents data on annual AOC shipments, revenues, average selling prices for 2007-2011 and forecasts the market for 2012-2016. It analyses technologies, market trends, protocol transitions, data rates, MSAs for InfiniBand and Ethernet protocols as well as potential applications of AOCs in disk and SSD storage, GPU clusters, and board-level interconnects using SAS and PCI Express AOCs. Lastly, future Wave Division Multiplexing AOCs are examined from silicon photonics companies for 2013 that promise 100Gin a QSFP formate and scalable to 1.6T per AOC in the future with enough aggregate bandwidth to uplink an enture server rack or router.

Additional analysis and forecast is included for the emerging Video and Consumer AOC segment using HDMI, DisplayPort and USB. Lastly, analysis of the embedded AOC segment with embedded DisplayPort and MIPI protocols.

The report is based on confidential sales information and detailed analysis of publicly available data released by leading component and equipment manufacturers.

Total report length: 130 Pages Includes an Excel Database.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Abstract

Author Biography

Report Objective

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Key Issues and Changes in 2010

  • AOCs Gain Strong Foothold in the HPC InfiniBand Segment with Other Segments to Follow Soon
  • 1.1. Introduction
  • 1.2. AOC General Business Overview
  • 1.3. 2010 Action - Key Industry, Market, Company and Product Changes
    • AOC Acquisitions Change the AOC and Transceiver Competitive Landscape
      • Products
      • Prices
      • New Products
      • On the Horizon
      • New Technologies to Watch'
  • 1.4. 2011 & 2012 Outlook and Predictions Summary
  • 1.5. LightCounting's Position Summary
  • 1.6. Key Trends, Issues & Recommendations to Executives
  • 1.7. AOC History & Development
  • 1.8. Market Hype and Distortions Created Unrealistic Expectations
  • 1.9. History and Development of AOCs
    • Figure 1-1: IBM's Roadrunner HPC Showing AOCs
  • 1.10. Why Are AOCs Important2
    • Figure 1-2: 4-channel and 12-Channel MSAs
    • Figure 1-3: Sun Microsystems Constellation Subsystem Supporting l2xlOGbpsCXP AOCs
  • 1.11. Issues That Will Limit AOC Growth
  • 1.12. Total Cost of Ownership Plays More Important Role

Chapter 2: New Enabling Technologies Emerge

  • 2.1. AOC technologies Enables New Product Types
    • Figure 2-1: New Products Based on AOC Technologies
  • 2.2. Converging Forces with the Right Timing
    • Figure 2-2 AOCs Will Impact Traditional Transceiver Markets and Create New Transceiver Products
  • 2.3. AOCs Compete with Parallel Transceiver and Direct Attach Copper
    • Figure 2-3: Examples of Cabling Waterfalls
  • 2.4. A Few Trends to Reduce Cabling Nightmares'
  • 2.5. 10Gbps Has Become the New Interconnect Currency
  • 2.6. Past 10Gbps to 25G
  • 2.7. Expanding DataCenter Size & High Data Rates Plays to AOC Strengths
  • 2.8. Small Changes Generate Large Feature and Benefit Gains
    • 2.8.1. Closing Off Photonics to the Outside World
    • 2.8.2. New Integration and Innovative Manufacturing Techniques
      • Figure 2-5: AOC Simplified Transceiver Construction
    • 2.8.3. Innovation Blooms with Relaxed Interoperability Constraints
    • 2.8.4. Introduction of Silicon Photonics
      • Figure 2-6: Luxtera's Silicon Photonic ACO Technologies
  • 2.9. Unique Benefits of a Closed Photonics System in Active Optical Cables
    • 2.9.1. AOCs May Enable Early Use of 25G and 40G VCSELs Sooner
    • 2.9.2. Silicon Photonics Enable Extremely Sensitive Photon Detection
    • 2.9.3. Silicon Photonics-based AOCs Enable Very Fast Modulation
    • 2.9.4. AOCs Enable Radically Lower Power Consumption Compared to Copper
    • 2.9.5. Known Reaches Offers Lower Cost and Lower Power Consumption
    • 2.9.6. Traditional Multimode Fiber and 850-nm Wavelength - Not Required
    • 2.9.7. Manufactured Cable Assemblies - Not an Issue
    • 2.9.8. AOCs May Enable Inexpensive, Short Reach WDM

Chapter 3: AOC Product Overview

  • 3.1. AOC Product Types and MSAs
    • 3.1.1. CX-4
    • 3.1.2. QSFP
    • 3.1.3. zQSFP+
    • 3.1.4. CXP
    • 3.1.5. zCXPandZXP
    • 3.1.6. Next Generation MSA Madness - CXP/2, Extended CXP'
    • 3.1.7. Next Generation MSA Madness - CFP/2, CFP/4'
    • 3.1.8. SFP+
      • Figure 3-1: Main MSAs Form Factors for AOCs
    • 3.1.9. Breakout Hybrid AOCs
      • Figure 3-2: AOC Product Examples
    • 3.1.9. Possible lOxlOG-vs- 4x25G War and AOCs2
    • 3.1.10. WDM AOCs on the Horizon2
      • Figure 3-3: WDM 10-16 Channel Laser Source
    • 3.1.11. What Happened to l2xlOG CXP AOC Segment2
      • Don't Count CXP AOCs Out Yet1
  • 3.2. AOCs by Protocol
    • 3.2.1. Disambiguating InfiniBand Terminology
      • Figure 3-4 High Speed Differential Signaling
      • Table 3-1: Various Protocol Data Rate Road Maps
    • 3.2.2. InfiniBand AOCs
      • QDR Rules and SDR, DDR Fade
      • FDR - Fourteen Data Rate - the Nest Step in 2012
      • EDR - Enhanced Data Rate - Someday
      • Figure 3-5: InfiniBand Technology Roadmap
    • 3.2.3. Ethernet AOCs
    • 3.2.12. Fibre Channel AOCs
    • 3.2.13. SASAOCs
      • Figure 3-6: Mini-SAS MSA and SAS Roadmap
    • 3.2.14. PCI Express AOCs
      • Companies to Watch in PCI Express Optical
        • Figure 3-7: AlpenlO PCI Express AOC, EOM and Line Card
      • PCIeOE - PCI Express-over-Ethernet
        • Figure 3-8: Aprius - PCI Express Systems Solutions
    • 3.1.15. Telecom, Military, Scientific - Bit-Blitzer's
    • 3.1.16. Consumer and Non-Datacenter AOCs
      • The “Need for Speed” - is Missing
      • Even with Converged AVDC - Need is Still Missing
        • Figure 3-9: Copper 5G USB and lOG HDMI Consumer Retail Prices
    • 3.1.17. Consumer Optical Formats - Optical HDMI. DisplayPort, USB
      • Optical HDMI v 1.4 at 10.2Gbps
        • Figure 3-10: Consumer and Non-Datacenter AOCs Examples
        • Figure 3-11: Digital Signage Applications
      • Optical DisplayPort v 1.2 at 10.8 and 21.6 Gbps
      • Optical USB 3.0 at 5 Gbps
      • HDBa5eT(HDBT)
      • DIIVA - Digital Interactive Interface for Video and Audio at 13.5 Gbps
      • Figure 3-12: Format Comparisons
    • 3.1.17. What Happened with LightPeak2
      • Figure 3-13: Thunderbolt and Light Peak

Chapter 4 InfiniBand and HPCs

  • 4.1. Why InfiniBand AOCs Became Popular with HPCs2
  • 4.2. The Rise of China's HPC Effort
    • Figure 4-1: TOP500.org HPC by Country
  • 4.3. Rise of SSDs and GPUs - An AOC Opportunity
  • 4.4. HPC InfiniBand Interconnect Architectures
  • 4.5. HPCArchitectures
    • Figure 4-2: HPC Systems Types: Exotic Architectures
    • Figure 4-3: Assembly HPC Example
    • Figure 4-3: PC- HPC or Super-PC Example
    • Figure 4-3: PS/3 Sony HPC Example
    • Figure 4-4: Processors Used in the TopSOO HPC Systems
  • 4.6. HPC Interconnect Architectures
    • Figure 4-5: HPC Cluster Networking Architecture
  • 4.7. Typical Datacenter Interconnect Architectures
    • Figure 4-8: Typical Fat Tree Datacenter Interconnect Architectures

Chapter 5: AOC Competitive Landscape

  • 5.1. AOC Vendor Landscape Rapidly Changed in 2010
    • 5.1.1. Shift in the InfiniBand Switching System and Silicon Supply Chain
    • 5.1.2. China Impacts AOC Market in an Unexpected Way
      • Figure 5-1: Chinese Tianhe-1A HPC & Custom ASIC for Dual AOCs
      • Figure 5-2: Tian he-lA HPC Custom ASIC for Dual AOCs
    • 5.1.3. Big Cabling Companies Move in Creating Shifts in AOC landscape
  • 5.2 AOC Suppliers
    • 5.2.1. AOC and Transceiver Suppliers
    • 5.2.2. AOC, Transceiver and Cabling Suppliers
    • 5.2.3. Venture Funded Start-ups
    • 5.2.4. AOC Subassembly and Electronics Suppliers
  • 5.3. Passive and Active Copper Competition with AOCs
    • 1) Passive CX-4 Copper
    • 2) Passive and Active QSFP Direct Attach Copper
    • 5.3.1. Going forward
  • 5.4. Parallel Optic Transceivers

Chapter 6: Forecast and Analysis

  • 6.2. Forecast by Protocol & MSAs
    • Figure 6-1: AOC Unit Shipment Forecast by Protocol 2010 & 2015
  • 6.3. Unit Shipments Forecast and Analysis
    • Figure 6-2: Unit Shipments Forecast by Data Rate 2007-2015
    • 6.3.1. Analyzing the 4x Shipment Data
      • Figure 6-3: 4-Channel Unit Shipments Forecast by Data Rate 2007-2015
    • 6.3.2. Analyzing the 12x Shipment Data
      • Figure 6-4: 12-Channel Unit Shipments Forecast by Data Rate 2007-2015
      • Table 6-1: AOC Unit Shipment Forecast 2009-2015
  • 6.4. Pricing Forecast and Analysis
    • 6.3.1. Analyzing the 4x Pricing Data
      • Figure 6-5: 4-Channel AOC Pricing Forecast 2007-2015
    • 6.3.2. Analyzing the 12x Pricing Data
      • Figure 6-6: 12-Channel AOC Pricing Forecast 2007-2015
      • Figure 6-7: Three 4xlOG verses Single l2xlOG AOC Pricing Delta
      • Table 6-2: AOC Average Selling Prices Forecast 2009-2015
  • 6.5. Revenue Forecast and Analysis
    • Figure 6-8: AOC Revenue Forecast 2007-2015
    • 6.5.1. Revenue Analysis
      • Figure 6-9: 4-Channel AOC Revenue Forecast 2007-2015
      • Figure 6-10: 12-Channel AOC Revenue Forecast 2007-2015
      • Table 6-3: AOC Revenue Forecast 2009-2015
  • 6.6. The AOC Analysis and Forecast Methodology

Conclusions

Active Optical Cables Supercomputers-to-Smartphones And Everything in Between, Both Inside & Out 4th Edition published by Light Counting in March 28, 2012. This report price starts from US $ 5000.

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