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New Report Analyzes Revenue Opportunities for Optical Interconnects

Reviewed

Oct 22 2013

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Revenue Opportunities for Optical Interconnects: Market and Technology Forecast - 2013 to 2020 Vol II: On-Chip and Chip-to-Chip" report to their offering.

According to this newly released report, the addressable market for chip-level optical interconnects could eventually run into billions of units and revenues in this market will total almost $520 million by 2019 going on to reach $1.02 billion by 2021. The new report is titled Revenue Opportunities for Optical Interconnects: Market and Technology Forecast - 2013 to 2020 Volume II: On-Chip and Chip-to-Chip and continues the firm's coverage of this market dating back to 2009.

The report covers four kinds of chip-level interconnect: optical engines, photonic integrated circuit (PIC)-based interconnects, silicon photonics and free-space optics. It includes nine-year (volume and value) forecasts with breakouts by active components along with fiber and waveguide transmission media. Compound semiconductor, silicon and polymer waveguides are covered, as are VCSELs, silicon lasers and quantum dot lasers. In addition, the report contains assessments of the latest business and technology strategies in the chip-level optical interconnect space.

The growing popularity of parallel computing, and the arrival of multicore processors and 3D chips are leading to data traffic jams both on-chip and chip-to-chip. However, the report believes that these trends are also creating opportunities for chip-level optical interconnects.

Avago, Finisar, IBM and Samtec have all proposed optical engines for chip-level interconnect. These miniaturized optical assemblies are currently the most mature technology available for this application and will generate revenues of $235 million in 2019. However, with their attached connectors and heat sinks, optical engines may prove too large for complex optical interconnection environments, such as in the coming generation of Exascale supercomputers.

Because of the limitations of optical engines, there are emerging opportunities for compact PIC- based interconnect devices based on indium phosphide and gallium arsenide. The author says these opportunities will generate $120 million in 2019 increasing to $275 million by 2021. However, bonding PIC interconnects onto a silicon processor or memory chip is both technically challenging and expensive. So far, only a few PIC and VCSEL technology companies have pursued the interconnect opportunity.

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