Last week, an optical communication company released 40G AOC products, which made the editor feel how hot the AOC market is, and made so many companies willing to enter and compete in this market. Market research firm Lightcounting also joined the fun at this time, and the company's latest sixth edition of the AOC market forecast has just been released. By 2022, the company forecasts the AOC market to reach $266 million. And according to the relationship between AOC products and optical modules, research and discussion are made.

　　Compared with the forecasts of other companies such as CIR for the AOC market, the research company's forecast data is consistently low. For example, this report believes that the AOC market in 2014 is 98 million US dollars. CIR's previous forecast had predicted that the AOC market would reach $1.5 billion in 2014. There are also reports that the AOC market in 2014 was $350 million. The research firm's report last June also predicted that the AOC market could reach $150 million in 2013. From this point of view, the market of AOC is not as expected by the outside world. Although the future is promising, the development road is bumpy.

　　The research company pointed out that since AOC products entered the market in 2007, the mainstream products are still 4X10Gbps QSFP+ products, mainly for the high-performance computing HPC market, especially the infiniBand standard products. Today, many data centers are also starting to use 10Gbps SFP+ AOC for interconnection, and 10GSFP currently accounts for a quarter of the AOC market in 2014. The expansion of the AOC market in the future depends on the increase in the application of higher-speed AOC products.

　　The research firm predicts that the HPC market will grow again in 2021, following 2018. At the same time, 4X14Gbps InfiniBand FDR standard products are gradually replacing the past 4X10Gbps InfiniBand QDR products. Core router manufacturers are increasingly using AOC products to upgrade routers. Compared with embedded optical modules, AOC products for rack interconnection are more suitable for on-demand growth market demand. At the same time, in 2015, AOC products for 40G data center Ethernet will also achieve more sales, but the sales growth of the entire AOC market still depends on the combination of product categories.

　　The research firm believes that 100G AOC products will gain rapid popularity. Intel's new Grantley server has heralded the rise of the 4X25Gbps InfiniBand EDR AOC market. In the data center interconnection market, light replaces electricity, and the biggest challenge is cost, but the energy consumption advantage of optical interconnection is beyond that of electrical interconnection. The new 4X12Gbps Mini-SAS HD "SAS-3" standard for storage networks will bring more AOC applications. The market for AOC will be brighter with the increase in applications to 25Gbps per channel in the future.