The Optical Communications Technology Lifecycle

Overlaying the 1M- and 10M-unit volume milestones on a single timeline makes the "acceleration" of technology adoption plain to see. In the 10G generation, the supply chain had the luxury of taking 10 years to reach a million units and another 5 years to reach ten million. In the AI boom of the 800G era, however, the time to a million units has been squeezed to just 1 year, and even the ten-million-unit milestone is being forced to arrive within 5 years. This is, without question, the ultimate stress test for advanced packaging, test yield and component capacity.