According to CIR (CommunicationsIndustryResearchers) latest report, "2015 Active Optical Cable Market: data centers and high-performance computing market," in 2020 for the data center of the active optical cable (AOC) market will reach $ 4.2 billion.

Has been in the Internet industry, we all know that Facebook is developing its own software and hardware products, and they are trying to guide the development of this area, OCP open computing platform is an example. The company recently announced that it is independent of the development of next-generation data center with top of the rack TOR 100Gbps Ethernet switches.

With the emergence of cloud computing and accelerate the deployment of large and ultra-large-scale data, data centers, network managers must constantly readjust and further development of the network. Under the impetus of this challenge, a variety of new technologies and new standards have emerged, not only can be used to improve and optimize the network capacity, security and flexibility, while controlling costs. Let us look at the top five trends in 2015 and the network to the user's meaning.

Since its inception in 2007 AOC come out, the market has been volatile. Service has always been the mainstream of high-performance computer market 4x10Gbps QSFP+ AOCs is the case. Thankfully, the data center servers using 10GbE SFP+ AOCs. Accounting for a quarter of $ 87 million in 2014 AOC market. Data centers also require higher speed Ethernet: 25G, 40G, 100G, or 400G. The connection between the needs of the core router chassis AOC. This makes the AOC market in 2020 grew to $ 193 million.

According to Infonetics latest report on 10G / 40G / 100G optical modules noted that the enterprise network and data center applications 10G / 40G / 100G optical module market in 2014 grew by 21% to reach $ 1.4 billion, the second half of 2014 with the entire data center 40Gbps module market grew by 81% a year ago. The company also forecast that demand for data center 100G modules for the start, in 2016 there will be a substantial increase.

Germany ADVA optical transmission equipment manufacturers, recently said that the successful completion of 400Gbps optical transmission experiment a data center interconnect environment. Poland Poznan Supercomputing and Network Center PSNC with ADVA use PIONIER's research and education network from Warsaw to Poznan fiber network carried out the experiments. Experimental network also includes hybrid ROADM and amplifier.

Optical communication technology in the 2015 forum held recently, Ovum analyst Daryl Inniss speech, analyze the optical communication opportunities in the data center field. He said the data center network is driving demand for high-bandwidth connections between data centers and data center for internal. Terabit-level connection between the data center needs; and internal data centers require more cost connection to 100G. However, the high cost of optical networks market slowdown in the rate of expansion is a fundamental problem.

The rapid development of information technology, the popularity of network-based technology advances, prompting data center construction continues toward large-scale, high-density, high transfer rate, pluralism, virtualization, intelligent, green direction. At the same time, for faster data transfer rates, smaller footprint, lower energy consumption needs, making the data center physical infrastructure as an important part of the cabling system more and more people's attention. Fiber and copper cabling system in the data center are two basic transmission medium, compared with copper systems, fiber-optic network with greater bandwidth, faster transfer rates, longer distances, more slender volume, and stronger anti-interference ability and so on. Therefore, although limited by the high price factor optical fiber, optical fiber can be completely replaced by copper, but the data center construction "Light of Copper" trend is inevitable.

Data center / cloud computing system needs higher bandwidth and lower power consumption and more urgent, AOC is one of the best solutions to meet this demand. AOC (active optical cables) compared with the copper interconnect has many significant advantages, such as lower on the system link transmission power, weighs only a quarter of direct-attached copper, copper-half volume slightly, and room cabling system has better air flow heat dissipation than copper cable bend radius can be made smaller, over longer distances (up to 100 to 300 meters), and the error rate is also better transmission performance , BER can reach 10 ^ -15. Compared with the optical transceiver module, AOC is not exposed due to the presence of optical interface, optical interface clean and contaminated problem does not exist, the system greatly enhanced stability and reliability, and reduce maintenance costs the engine room.