LightCounting (LC) has released the 9th edition of its Silicon Photonics market report, providing new market forecasts for linear-driven pluggable and co-packaged optical devices.
Many industry experts predict that Silicon Photonics (SiP) will revolutionize the optical device and module industry by enabling cost-effective and high-volume production of optical connections. Predicting when this transformation will occur has been challenging: for a while, it seemed like nothing was happening until suddenly, the change became apparent. Perhaps unnoticed by many, Silicon Photonics is already one of the mainstream technologies in the global optical transceiver market, as shown in the figure below.
LC forecasts that the market share of Silicon Photonics modulator transceivers will increase from 24% in 2022 to 44% in 2028. What's even more intriguing is that modulators based on other thin-film materials can be manufactured on silicon chips and integrated with various optical components and electronic ICs using Silicon Photonics as the platform. These materials currently include thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), barium titanate (BTO), and electro-optic polymers, which LC combines into the "TFLN and Others" category in the figure.
Another exciting shift in the industry is the adoption of linear-driven pluggable optics (LPO) transceivers and co-packaged optical devices (CPO). Both solutions significantly reduce power consumption compared to standard retimed transceivers with built-in PAM4 DSP chips. Removing the need for DSP saves power but requires more complex SerDes for direct driving.
Broadcom's 100G SerDes was developed with CPO in mind but seems to support LPO as well. The early performance of 800G LPO modules driven by 100G SerDes has been very promising. However, LPO is unlikely to work with 200G SerDes, making CPO the only choice for 1.6T ports.
Will all LPO and CPO solutions be based on Silicon Photonics? It's unlikely, but Silicon Photonics is the current leader and an ideal platform for integrating new materials. Silicon Photonics modulators are currently the best choice for linear-driven designs since GaAs directly modulated lasers (DML) and InP electro-absorption modulated lasers (EML) are more "nonlinear" devices. Not all solutions may use Silicon Photonics modulators, but it's certain that all LPO/CPO devices, except VCSELs, will be based on the Silicon Photonics platform. All new materials (TFLN, BTO, and polymers) will be integrated with other optical components and electronic devices using the Silicon Photonics platform.
Over the next five years or even longer, traditional retimed pluggable products will continue to dominate the market. However, LPO/CPO ports will account for over 30% of the total 800G and 1.6T ports deployed from 2026 to 2028. As usual, nothing may seem to be happening for a while until suddenly, this change occurs before us all.
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