According to the report, data centres, driven by mobile broadband and video applications, require higher data-rate pipes and interconnects than before. The trend will lead to sales of active optical cables (AOCs) for the data centre amounting to US$1.5 billion by 2019, as AOCs offer an excellent entry point for introducing fiber optics into a data centre.
CIR observes that Chinese AOC suppliers are showing that they can compete with the best US, European and Japanese AOC suppliers. A few years back, CIR would have called the whole optical engine concept as beyond the capabilities of Chinese suppliers, but today Gigalight is using optical engines as the basis for its optical data centre products, and other Chinese firms are expected to follow suit. Chinese suppliers are now able to supply 40 Gbps cables with ease and a few are offering 100-Gbps AOCs, the research firm says.
Established firms will need to resopnd to the Chinese AOC challenge with a strategic response such as better branding, improved supply chains or upgraded products, CIR said. The company also expects to see more activity in AOCs that use the highest-performance modules. While such AOCs are not easy to make, the demand for them is high. CFP* and CDFP* together are expected to generate US$190 million in revenues by 2019.
CIR predicts that the "next big thing" in the AOC space will be CDFP AOCs, and names Finisar, Molex and TE Connectivity, all of which have already introduced CDFP AOCs, as the brands to watch.
Throughout the period considered in the report, the “workhorse” QSFP* and CXP** AOCs will continue to be the biggest revenue earners, with a combined sales of US$1.3 billion in 2019, simply because they support both the Ethernet and IB protocols that are core to any data centre, and at data rates that are likely to be the ones most used in data centres over the next decade. The QSFP AOC business is now centred around the 40-Gbps opportunity, and almost every firm offers CXP options, CIR notes. CXP can support 100 GigE or three 40-GigE channels.
Specifically, the report covers AOCs supporting CX4***, SFP/SFP+*, QSFP, CXP, CFP, CDFP, and SAS/Mini-SAS**** multi-source agreements, and assesses the strategies of the AOC suppliers including: 3M, 10GTEK, A3CUBE, Amphenol, Avago, Brocade, Centera Photonics, ConnPro, Eoptolink, FCI, Fiberon, Finisar, Fujikura, Gigalight, Fujitsu, Hitachi Cable, IBM, InnoLight, JDSU, Juniper Networks, Luxtera, Mellanox, Molex, Multilane, Samtec, Siemon, Sopto, Sumitomo, TE Connectivity, and Volex.
Volume II of the report discusses the market potential for active optical cables outside the data centre, especially in consumer electronics, personal computing and digital signage. CIR points out that AOCs are already being used as extenders in certain video environments and appear in digital signage, but have the potential to further penetrate non-conventional markets, The market for AOCs for non-data centre applications will reach US$1.2 billion by 2019, they said.
Other predictions include:
- By 2019, AOCs sold into the digital signage space will reach just over US$350 million.
- Revenue from sales of AOCs in the personal computing sector will grow to US$835 million by 2019, including high-speed connections to peripherals/storage, LANs-on-Motherboards and board-to-board connectivity.
**CXP stands for 120 Gbps 12x Small Form-factor Pluggable respectively.
***CX4 or 802.3ak, is a standard for 10-Gigabit Ethernet data transfers over eight lanes of copper cabling, four in each direction.
****SAS/Mini-SAS refer to Serial Attached SCSI and Mini-SAS standards.
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