Tracking the Coherent DSP Supply Chain

Uncovering who uses which DSP, and which DSP vendors ship the most volume.

Following the recent announcements around OFC23 in March, Cignal AI has updated one of our more popular charts, the Coherent DSP Decoder Ring. It tracks the equipment OEMs and optical components vendors supplying coherent optical interfaces. This data, coupled with detailed shipment data, also allows the relative volumes of each DSP vendor to be calculated.

In general, vertically integrated vendors who control their own DSPs (e.g., Ciena, Huawei, Infinera, Nokia) have had the most success selling coherent optical ports. However, as coherent optics move to pluggable formats and the popularity of 400ZR-type modules encourages multiple vendors to sell directly to service providers, that will no longer be true. DSP development for high-performance optics for long-distance networks will remain within vertically integrated companies, but the market for DSPs used in pluggables is expanding.