The Last Three Coherent DSP Vendors and What That Costs You
Six coherent DSP houses competed in 2018. Three remain. That's not really three options. It's one option, one second-source, and a negotiating chip. Procurement teams who
Six coherent DSP houses competed in 2018. Three remain. That's not really three options. It's one option, one second-source, and a negotiating chip. Procurement teams who
Six coherent DSP houses competed in the optical market in 2018. By 2020 the field was five. By 2022 it was four. As of mid-2025, three remain. Two of those
Open any 400ZR datasheet and you'll find a reach number. 120 km. Sometimes 80 km. Sometimes 140 km on the more aggressive specs. That number is a clean-link
Pluggable ZR did to metro DCI what nobody expected at this pace. Between roughly 2022 and 2025, transponder shelves got pulled out of metro builds across most of the hyperscalers,
Every generation of coherent pluggables came with the same chart on the same slide. A clean descending curve, pJ/bit on the Y axis, time on the X axis. Forty