According to a new report from market Research, demand for optical transceivers at speeds of 800 gigabytes and above will grow strongly over the next decade, with sales of such modules expected to reach $245 million by 2025 and $2.5 billion by 2029.

  Data center traffic is expected to grow further, driven by 5G and Iot applications, while data center infrastructure upgrades will require 800G interfaces. The research firm thinks 800G will be used for Inter-building connections, but it will be critical for data centers that use a large number of 200G servers.

   800G represents a new era of optical network speeds and delays, and is being driven by a huge growth in video conferencing, streaming media and digital entertainment, as well as new applications including virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence services.

   The report believes that the commercial 800G module will be available in the next few years. Thanks to the efforts of groups such as 800G Pluggable MSA and the Ethernet Technology Consortium, work is already underway on a standard for 800G Ethernet modules, and the 51.2T switching chip will be a key driver for switching devices with ports of 800G and above.

    According to the report, the 800G public network market will not be very large. In this market, transceivers will be sold as part of a larger system package. They will be proprietary, so that device companies can squeeze as much functionality out of their boxes as possible to attract the big telecom companies, which is not an easy thing to do. On the public network side, Ciena, Huawei and Infinera are among the companies that have played an important role in the 800G trial. But given the political realities, Huawei‘s market will be largely confined to China and the countries within its sphere of influence.

   Some companies will stand out in the 800G and above speed category. With regard to pluggable technology, most engineers want to extend their life cycle as much as possible and make great efforts to do so. However, despite the popularity of pluggable technology, it will lose momentum when demand reaches 1.6Tbps. Copackaged Optics may replace plug-able technology, the report says, and Onboard Optics may be just a transition.