Although the optical transceiver is small, as the most important accessory in the optical communication industry chain, it can restrict the operation and development of the data center to a certain extent. The future development prospect of the optical transceiver industry is very broad.
Benefiting from the growth of information application traffic demand and the upgrading of optical communication technology, cloud computing and big data and other technical applications drive the accelerated construction of global ultra-large-scale data centers, optical transceivers continue to grow as the most important accessories in the optical communication industry chain. The data shows that the global optical transceiver market has grown from US$6.043 billion to US$66.72 from 2017 to 2020. In 2021, the global optical transceiver market will be maintained at US$9 billion. It is expected to increase to US$14.5 billion in 2026. The compound growth rate in 2021-2026 is 10%.
The role of the optical transceiver is photoelectric conversion. It can convert the electrical signal in the device and the optical signal in the optical fiber to each other, making it possible for the data of the device to be transmitted in the optical fiber. Otherwise, the data center cannot operate at all! In the data center, the optical transceiver is mainly used for information storage, generation and mining; in the data center interconnection, the optical transceiver can be used for data replication, software and system upgrade; from the data center to the user, the optical transceiver is used for data conversion .
It is not easy to provide optical transceivers with reliable quality and meeting the requirements of data centers. In recent years, data centers have higher and higher requirements for optical transceivers. The first is high speed. At present, the server interface is changing from 1G to 10G, and the aggregation switch is changing from 10G to 40G/100G. The network bandwidth capacity of the data center is constantly improving. The second is to have low power consumption. Although the power consumption of an optical transceiver is only a few watts, the demand for optical transceivers in a data center is very large. With thousands of devices, the power consumption is staggering. According to calculations, the data center's three-year electricity bill can rebuild a data center. The third is low cost. Although the price of a single optical transceiver is not high, the quantity is large. Calculated in this way, the overall cost of purchasing optical transceivers for data centers is not low, and sometimes even exceeds the purchase amount of general network equipment. Now the compatible transceivers on the market are more popular, the price is much lower than the original factory, but the performance and quality are comparable to the original factory.
Although the optical transceiver is small, it plays an unparalleled role in the data center, and can even restrict the operation and development of the data center to a certain extent. The future development of the optical transceiver industry has broad prospects, and we will wait and see.
