Acacia

This inaugural report commences Cignal AI’s complete coverage of Optical Components, including both revenue and detailed component shipments.

Key technology takeaways from OFC 2022.

Here is a sneak peek of the hot topics of discussion at OFC 2022

Initial Optical Components report, in Beta – for access to the report, please contact [email protected].

The historical classification of coherent optical technology (Gen1, Gen2, etc.) is no longer sufficient. Therefore, Cignal AI will now recognize and classify coherent DSP technology by its maximum baud rate and whether the DSP is optimized for Performance or Compact applications.

Development moves past 90+ GBaud directly to 120+

Mentioned: Scott Wilkinson on Acacia’s new product announcement

After years of anticipation, 400G pluggable digital coherent optics (DCO) will finally achieve general availability and initial deployment in 2021.

400Gbps+ port shipments doubled YoY, 400ZR ports started to ship, and compact modular sales significantly outperformed the overall optical hardware market this quarter.

Cignal AI continues to track announcements of 5th generation (800Gbps-capable, 90+ GBaud) optical trials and deployments.

In conjunction with OFC, Cisco published a note quantifying the total volume of coherent ports shipped with Acacia and Cisco technologies combined.

TeliaCarrier’s plans for deploying 400ZR and growing its network post-COVID

Chinese webscale operator Tencent has been developing its own white box for optical transport. In this report we provide more details of Tencent’s work, including its adoption of CFP2 400Gbps optics.

Compact Modular sales (and hence disaggregation) have historically lagged in APAC versus the rest of the world, so APAC’s sudden and extraordinary growth over the past few quarters means that something has changed and deserves a closer look.

4Q20 Compact Modular sales significantly outperformed the overall optical market, as APAC sales more than doubled and surpassed EMEA sales for the first time. 400ZR forecasts for 2022 and beyond were increased based on growing operator interest.

Windstream announced it performed a field trial of Acacia 400ZR+ modules in Cisco compact modular equipment. This is a notable event because it is the first public trial of extended reach 4th gen pluggable coherent 400ZR+ modules and the first demonstration of 400ZR+ modules using the larger CFP2 format.

This report provides a summary of Cignal AI’s current outlook for the year. Creating forecasts for 2020 was uniquely challenging and forecasting the expected return to normal by the end of 2021 is also very complex.

Lightreading covered an announcement by Telia Carrier that it was one of the first major network operators to use pluggable 400ZR and OpenZR+ coherent modules.

Compact modular sales grew much faster than the optical market overall, with significant growth in APAC this quarter. 400ZR and ZR+ modules began sampling with several hundred modules shipped for evaluation.

Acacia announced further enhancements to its 100G coherent pluggable product line targetted at edge and access applications.