Active optical cable market has a bright future

The Active Optical Cable (AOC) market began to develop in 2007 and has now expanded to high-speed data and peripheral markets for some video communications. Starting with high-performance computers (HPCs) and now having multiple protocols spread to traditional data centers, active optical cable (AOC) has finally ushered in the much-awaited broader market.

In 2012, the global active optical cable (AOC) market exceeded analyst estimates by 65%. One key difference is that the 14G InfiniBFDR Active Optical Cable (AOC) segment has grown faster than expected. LightCounting currently expects the global active optical cable (AOC) market to grow by 30% to US$150 million in 2013.

At this stage, the InfiniBand market has the largest share and has been transferred to the 14G FDR QSFP+, while the traditional data center still stays in the 10G QSFP+ format. Active Optical Cable (AOC) also has potential development opportunities in other protocols, such as SAS, Fibre Channel, and PCI Express, where transmission rates exceed 10G.

The emergence of big data has enabled supercomputer (HPC) clusters to enter the enterprise from the Supercomputing Research Center. Most Ethernet-centric people are surprised to find that InfiniBand is entering the cloud computing data center in a meaningful way.

Finally, more and more manufacturers are entering the video and consumer active cable (AOC) market using Thunderbolt, HDMI and USB protocols. Unexpectedly, Corning also entered this market. Unfortunately, the "Optical Thunderbolt Factor" is still uncertain and it will take some time to realize its impact in this market segment.

As more and more protocols move toward higher line rates, transmission distances and electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems for copper links are also emerging. Active cables have high speed, long distance, and low price. Strong advantage. This situation has contributed to the Active Optical Cable (AOC) service.