Opto-Electronic Transceiver Technology Report 2009

Opto-Electronic Transceiver Technology Report 2009 published by Light Counting in May, 2009. This report consists of 84 PAGES and the price starts from US $ 3950.

Introduction

“The Internet continues to make new demands of the optical transceiver industry,” says Roy Rubenstein, Director of Research at LightCounting. “Technology has a key role to play in helping transceiver players meet new requirements while giving their designs an edge, in performance and in reducing costs, in what is a fiercely competitive marketplace.”

The opto-electronic transceiver industry has experienced its fair share of growing pains but has emerged all the stronger for it. Lessons learnt during the telecom downturn of 2001- 2003 in particular will serve firms well as they navigate the stormy market conditions expected in 2009 and 2010.

Now, as the transceiver industry enters adulthood, it will need to use all of its experience to exploit emerging market opportunities that will use increasingly complex technologies. That optical transceiver opportunities exist despite the economic downturn is due to the continual growth in data traffic that shows no signs of abating. All of the world' s voice, video, and data traffic travel though opto-electronic transceivers at some point in the network. And transceivers will only become more pervasive with time.

LightCounting' s first technology review report looks at key market trends driving optical transceiver use. Bandwidth growth drivers are impacting the access, metro, and long-haul networks, as well as impacting the datacenter in the need for faster connections, which brings to the fore the ongoing battle between copper and optical interconnects.

Optical transceivers must address these market drivers via several technical considerations and developments, including the need for greater speed, which will be met in a variety of ways such as the adoption of advanced modulation schemes; the use of parallel and serial interconnect and multiple wavelengths per fiber; and new disruptive developments, like active optical cable and silicon photonics. Practical issues, such as manufacturing, also must be weighed: the way a company makes its transceivers plays a critical part in its success irrespective of the opto-electronic smarts crammed inside transceivers.

The market is also witnessing the merging of once-separate optics and electronics design domains. The two domains now play complementary roles in transceiver and optical system design. Additional technologies, established and new, promise to benefit transceiver design. One is optical integration, a not-so-new technique that will increasing be used as higher-speed transceiver designs become more prominent. Silicon photonics is another, this time a fresh approach. The primary market of silicon photonics remains inter- and intra-chip communication for emerging computing requirements, but it could end up playing a key role for the telecom and datacom transceiver markets.

LightCounting' s first Technology Review report addresses the high-speed interface market for datacom and telecom. From the LAN to the WAN, the report addresses copper and fibre interfaces ranging in speed from 4-Gbps to 100-Gbps; from short range parallel optics - POP4 and SNAP12 - to emerging 100-Gbps Ethernet standards, as well as the 4, 8 and 16-Gbps Fibre Channel standards.

• The key markets and drivers fueling transceiver development
• The underlying forces and markets advancing the transceiver business
• How the issues of speed, cost, and power are being addressed by transceiver manufacturers
• How manufacturing is turning out to be a major competitive weapon for vendors
• How electronics and optics are boosting link performance and reducing transceiver and system cost
• Whether photonic integration technologies are ready to radically transform the industry

Sales/ marketing professionals addressing the datacom and telecom markets, executives developing business strategies, and the investment community interested in copper and optical high-speed interface opportunities.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Table of Contents

• The Growing Role of Optical Transceivers
• Transceiver Markets and Trends

• Bandwidth Drivers
  • Explosion of Content From Mobile Devices
  • High-Speed Broadband Deployment At the Network Edge
  • Changing Use of E-mail
  • Rich Web Site Content
  • Music Downloads
  • Video Downloads
  • The Internet Reaches Everywhere
  • Rising Internet Use in Asia
• The Impact of Rapid Traffic Growth on the Network
  • Access network transformation
    • Broadband Drivers
      • Femtocells Set to Play Role in the Home
    • Fiber-to-the-X Market Status
    • WDM Will Play a Key Role in Next-Generation PON
    • CATV Access
  • The Optical Packet Transport Platform
    • OPT: Jury Is Still Out
    • Opposing Contenders to OPT
  • High-speed Optical Transmission in the Core Network
    • 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps Market Drivers
    • 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps Roadmaps
  • Optical Penetrates the Datacenter
    • Datacenter trends
    • Datacenter Architecture and the Impact on Transceivers
    • Networking Protocol Impact on Transceiver Requirements
    • Unified Datacenter Fabrics
    • 10-Gbps Technology Begins to Reach the Server
  • Optics Battles with Copper for Supremacy at 10-Gbps and Beyond
    • The 10GbE Question
      • SFP+ Optical Modules
      • Active optical cables
      • 10GBASE-T ICs
      • SFP+ Copper Cables
    • Consumer Applications
    • The Move to Even Higher Speeds

• Overall Product Trends
  • Data Rates Continue to Rise
  • Form Factors Continue to Shrink
• Telecom Products
  • 10-Gbps Telecom Interfaces Move to Transceivers and to XFP
  • 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps Interfaces
    • Client-Side 40-Gbps Interfaces
    • Line-Side 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps Interfaces Incorporate Innovative Modulation Schemes
    • Duo-binary
    • DPSK
    • DQPSK
    • Polarization Multiplexing Combined with Phased-Shift Keying
  • Contrarian Approaches to 40-Gbps
    • Infinera' s Approach: Integrating PICs and Bandwidth Virtualization
    • Nortel Networks' s Approach: Using Dual-Mode QPSK
    • OpVista' s Approach: Employing 4x10-Gbps in a 50GHz Channel
  • WDM Continues to Thrive
• Datacom Optical Transceivers
  • Migration to SFP+
  • Fibre Channel Moves to 8-Gbps
  • Parallel Transceivers Find Their Sweet Spot
    • Ethernet and Fibre Channel Converge and Diverge
    • Parallel Transceiver Trends
    • Parallel Transceivers for 40-Gbps and 100-Gbps Short-Reach Implementations
  • Active Optical Cables
    • AOC Have Cost Advantages
    • AOC Deliver Compatibility with Copper Interfaces

• Transitioning from Craftsmanship to High Volume
• Manufacturing Cost Drivers
  • Packaging
  • Testing
  • Reliability Testing
• The Role of Standards and Specifications
• Design for Manufacture is Now Critical
• Analog IC Design Moves In-House
• Offshoring Enters a New Phase

• Interfacing Optics and Electronics
• LRM and SFP+ Blur the Electronics-Optics Boundary in Enterprise Networks
  • LRM
  • SFP+
• EDC Looks to Penetrate Telecom Applications
• Future directions of electronics for longer reach telecom applications

• Moore' s Law Doesn' t Apply to Optical Integration
  • Defining Key Terms
• Photonic integration challenges
  • Hybrid Integration Becomes a Key Photonic Tool
  • Integration Limitations
• New Applications Drive Optical Integration
  • Reduced Cost per Transported Bit
  • System Density
  • Parallel Channel Designs
• Silicon Photonics
  • Photonic Building Blocks in Silicon
  • Silicon Photonics Players
  • Silicon Photonics' Market Evolution
  • Silicon Photonics Still Has Some Challenges to Overcome
  • Research Programs and Initiatives

• Transceiver Forecast Summary
• Derivative Forecast for Optical Transmitter and Receiver Technologies
  • Optical Transmitter Technologies
  • Optical Receiver Technologies

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