40/100G Ethernet transceiver market to reach half billion in 4 years

The market for 40G and 100G Ethernet transceivers will reach $545 million in revenues by 2014, with about two-thirds coming from 40G Ethernet products, according to market research firm CIR.

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

100 Gigabit Ethernet: Road to Terabit Ethernet 

Juniper, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent have all announced 40G or 100G Ethernet router products for service providers, and all expect to ship this year.

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The market for 40G and 100G Ethernet transceivers will reach $545 million in revenues by 2014, with about two-thirds coming from 40G Ethernet products, according to market research firm CIR.

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

100 Gigabit Ethernet: Road to Terabit Ethernet 

Juniper, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent have all announced 40G or 100G Ethernet router products for service providers, and all expect to ship this year.

Suppliers of pre-standard 40G and 100G Ethernet transceivers, meanwhile, include Avago, Finisar, Opnext and Sumitomo, according to CIR. The first products in this space are active optical cables and are based on 10G Ethernet technology with new media access controller/physical coding sublayer programmable chips, the firm notes.

Although 40G OC-768 continues to be deployed in carrier networks, carriers are preparing for a leap to 40/100G Ethernet, CIR reports. A key advantage of 100G Ethernet over OC-768 is the lack of required dispersion compensation of the optical signal because 100G Ethernet transceivers use coherent detection, CIR notes. Coherent detection helps to control optical impairments at high speeds, such as signal dispersion, and recover the modulated signals.

CIR estimates that the market for 100G Ethernet LR and ER transceivers will reach approximately $195 million in revenues by 2014.

The main market for serial 40G Ethernet will be in the access and metro markets and in some parts of the long-haul core, CIR says. By 2014, revenues from serial 40G Ethernet are expected to reach almost $140 million, according to the firm.
On the demand side, high-performance computing markets will be where 40/100G Ethernet finds some of the earliest traction. CIR believes the technology will find its way into "the typical enterprise" in three to five years.

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