AI clusters drive growth in coherent optical transceiver shipments

Additionally, vendors' advancements in smaller, energy-efficient coherent transceivers are rapidly broadening their platform compatibility and application diversity. They currently project that, over the next five years, nearly half of the coherent transceivers will ship on routers and Ethernet switches.

“The move to pluggable coherent transceivers is occurring at a rapid pace,” states Jimmy Yu, Vice President for Optical Transport market research at Dell’Oro Group. “This movement accelerated with the wide availability of ZR/ZR+ optics and, more importantly, the adoption of an IPoDWDM architecture,” added Yu.

“Today’s largest AI clusters built by hyperscalers, are already approaching 100 thousand accelerators, with projections reaching up to one million in the near future,” states Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President for Ethernet Switch market research at Dell’Oro Group. “Due to the limited power capacity in each data centre – and the high-power consumption of these accelerators – AI clusters are increasingly distributed across multiple data centres. This shift heightens the importance of  Data Centre Interconnect technologies that connect these data centres efficiently,” adds Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the Coherent Optics Report:

• Dell’Oro have significantly raised their optical transceiver shipment forecast to reflect faster than expected adoption of ZR pluggable optics and increased demand on hyperscalers backbone bandwidth propelled by large AI clusters.
• They have raised the forecast for 1600ZR and lowered that of 800ZR, reflecting rising demand for higher data centre speeds to support AI/ML compute clusters.
• Coherent optics deployed on Router & Switch platforms will account for more than 50% of the annual increase in transceiver shipments throughout the forecast period. By 2028, they expect them to constitute more than 45% of the total transceiver volume.
• Demand for ZR+ optics is on the rise with the introduction of higher transmit-powered transceivers. Dell’Oro forecast that ZR+ optic shipments will grow at a five-year CAGR of 70%.

About the Report

The Coherent Optics Advanced Research Report includes five-year market forecasts for the entire use of coherent optics, accounting for optical plugs and embedded modules (by speed up to 1.6Tbps) on a worldwide basis.