Large scale AI clusters to fuel more growth in coherent optical transceiver shipments

Dell’Oro Group forecasts coherent optical transceiver shipments to grow at a double-digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for the next five years, surpassing well over five million in cumulative shipments.

  • Wednesday, 6th November 2024 Posted 7 months ago in by Phil Alsop

Additionally, vendors' advancements in smaller, energy-efficient coherent transceivers are rapidly broadening their platform compatibility and application diversity. We currently project that, over the next five years, nearly half of the coherent transceivers will ship on routers and ethernet switches.

“The move to pluggable coherent transceivers is occurring at a rapid pace,” stated Jimmy Yu, Vice President for Optical Transport market research at Dell’Oro Group. “This movement accelerated with the wide availability of ZR/ZR+ optics and, more importantly, the adoption of an IPoDWDM architecture,” added Yu.

“Today’s largest AI clusters built by hyperscalers, are already approaching 100 thousand accelerators, with projections reaching up to one million in the near future,” stated Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President for Ethernet Switch market research at Dell’Oro Group. “Due to the limited power capacity in each data center—and the high-power consumption of these accelerators—AI clusters are increasingly distributed across multiple data centers. This shift heightens the importance of Data Center Interconnect technologies that connect these data centers efficiently,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the Coherent Optics Report:

We have significantly raised our optical transceiver shipment forecast to reflect faster than expected adoption of ZR pluggable optics and increased demand on hyperscalers backbone bandwidth propelled by large AI clusters.

We raised the forecast for 1600ZR and lowered that of 800ZR, reflecting rising demand for higher data center speeds to support AI/ML compute clusters.

Coherent optics deployed on Router & Switch platforms will account for more than 50 percent of the annual increase in transceiver shipments throughout the forecast period. By 2028, we expect them to constitute more than 45 percent of the total transceiver volume.

Demand for ZR+ optics is on the rise with the introduction of higher transmit-powered transceivers. We forecast that ZR+ optic shipments will grow at a five-year CAGR of 70 percent.

Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls,...
The majority (83%) of IT and business professionals in Europe believe employees in their organisation are using AI.

AI and offshore outsourcing on the rise

Posted 2 days ago by Phil Alsop
Whitelane Research, an independent organisation specialising in IT sourcing research across Europe, has released its 2025 IT Sourcing Study for the...
55% report cloud environments are more complex to secure than on-premises infrastructure.
As demand for data-driven insights increases, data overload could render UK businesses operationally ineffective.

AI use is outpacing policy and governance

Posted 1 week ago by Phil Alsop
The majority (83%) of IT and business professionals in Europe believe employees in their organisation are using AI.

Fierce competition in global AI leadership

Posted 1 week ago by Phil Alsop
More than four out of five of CEOs and IT executives surveyed are driving AI growth for their companies.
Distributor looks to the future and shares channel growth and transformation drivers as it celebrates its 40th birthday.