<\/span><\/h2>\nTo this day, it is already obvious that optical communication is penetrating into shorter range transmission. For example, the industry has recently used co-packaged optical technology to solve the problem of optical interconnection within modules and between chips, and the capacity of a single switching chip will be as high as 25.6 Tb\/s. As shown in Figure 1, typical application scenarios of optical communication at different transmission distances and the penetration to shorter distances are listed.<\/p>\n
![\"Evolution](\"https:\/\/www.fibermall.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Evolution-of-optical-communication-applications.png\")
<\/p>\n
Figure 1. Evolution of optical communication applications<\/b><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIt’s no coincidence that more and more applications for optical communications are shifting to short-haul. Cisco predicted this trend several years ago, and it was confirmed.\u00a0Metropolitan network traffic already surpassed long-haul backbone networks in 2017, and with the rise of content delivery networks (CDN) and the growth of cloud-related services, data center network-related traffic is now comparable to Internet IP traffic.<\/p>\n
It is expected that by next year, the share of traffic within data centers will exceed 70%, while the share of east-west traffic is nearly 85%, far exceeding north-south traffic, as shown in Figure 2.<\/p>\n
![\"global](\"https:\/\/www.fibermall.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/global-data-center-traffic-by-destination.png\")
<\/p>\n
Figure 2. Cisco Forecast Data Center Traffic Distribution in 2021<\/b><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nTherefore, it has to be said that the network of the future will be dominated by data centers, and short-range optical transmission must be emphasized. Not only that, but with the shift in network architecture, a lot of content is being brought closer to users to provide lower latency services. Therefore, the more short-haul applications, the stronger the demand for bandwidth.<\/p>\n
The current long-haul backbone has just been upgraded to 200G, but demand in short-haul data centers has long reached 400G, and some will even be upgraded to 800G interface rates. This year, the Ethernet Alliance has released the 800G Ethernet specification. Obviously, short-range applications represented by data centers, supercomputing clusters and other interconnected networks have become a new growth point for optical communications outside the telecom market, and the importance is self-evident.<\/p>\n