GigE transceivers set to grow

According to a report from CIR, US market analysts, the market for 40/100 GigE transceivers will reach $640 million in revenue by 2014, with about two-thirds coming from 40 GigE products.

With standards due to be completed by the middle of 2010 and products arriving on the market, CIR believes that the 40/100 GigE space is ready to emerge.

Key findings include: Suppliers of pre-standard 40/100 GigE transceivers already include Avago, Finisar, Opnext and Sumitomo among others and these early entrants will be key forces in shaping the 40/100 Gbps future. These first products are arriving in the form of active optical cables and are based on 10 GigE technology with new MAC/PCS FPGAs.

Although OC-768 continues to be deployed in carrier networks, carriers are preparing for a leap to 40/100 GigE ethernet. 100 GigE has a key advantage over OC-768 in the lack of required dispersion compensation due to the use of coherent detection in the transceivers. CIR estimates that the market for 100 GigE LR and ER transceivers will reach about $226 million by 2014.

CIR predicts that a 'serial' 40G solution will better satisfy market requirements after 2013 and that the current 4x10G CWDM variant may instead be a short-lived product.

The main market for serial 40 GigE will be in the access and metro markets, and some parts of the long-haul core may be affected as well. By 2014, revenues from serial 40GigE are expected to reach almost $140 million.

On the demand side, the purchasing behaviour of high-performance computing centres will be important. This segment of the market will be where 40/100GigE will find some of its earliest and most enthusiastic users.

In addition, the company believes that the technology that HPC centres buy today is what the typical enterprise will be buying in three to five years.