Yes it kind of sounds like a whole lot of talk but no beef. I snagged one paragraph from it and pasted it on the end of here. I hate to put this out there because the nay sayers will go back and find old research then base their comments on old information rather than looking forward but what the heck we need to understand which market we will be playing in and I definitely think that it in the single mode arena.
Single Mode cable is a single strand (most applications use 2 fibers) of glass fiber with a diameter of 8.3 to 10 microns that has one mode of transmission. Single Modem fiber is used in many applications where data is sent at multi-frequency (WDM Wave-Division-Multiplexing) so only one cable is needed - (single-mode on one single fiber).
Single-mode fiber gives you a higher transmission rate and up to 50 times more distance than multimode, but it also costs more. Single-mode fiber has a much smaller core than multimode. The small core and single light-wave virtually eliminate any distortion that could result from overlapping light pulses, providing the least signal attenuation and the highest transmission speeds of any fiber cable type. Single-mode optical fiber is an optical fiber in which only the lowest order bound mode can propagate at the wavelength of interest typically 1300 to 1320nm.
Multi-Mode cable has a little bit bigger diameter, with common diameters in the 50-to-100 micron range for the light carry component (in the US the most common size is 62.5um). Most applications in which Multi-mode fiber is used, 2 fibers are used (WDM is not normally used on multi-mode fiber). POF is a newer plastic-based cable which promises performance similar to glass cable on very short runs, but at a lower cost.
Multimode fiber gives you high bandwidth at high speeds (10 to 100MBS - Gigabit to 275m to 2km) over medium distances. Light waves are dispersed into numerous paths, or modes, as they travel through the cable's core typically 850 or 1300nm. Typical multimode fiber core diameters are 50, 62.5, and 100 micrometers. However, in long cable runs (greater than 3000 feet [914.4 meters), multiple paths of light can cause signal distortion at the receiving end, resulting in an unclear and incomplete data transmission so designers now call for single mode fiber in new applications using Gigabit and beyond.
"Where exactly is the need for Silicon photonics?"
"As the data rates escalate (eg 25 G, 56 G), the reach of multi-mode fiber with VCSELs is dramatically shrinking. At the same time, large datacenters and cloud datacenter are becoming increasingly large requiring longer reaches than 100 m the VCSEL technology enables. This is spawning a lot of interest in using silicon photonics for inexpensive, high-speed modulation and to build transceivers that can reach up to 2 km for the ever-expanding datacenter market. This area is where the optics industry hopes it will see both high unit numbers and decent prices. This application space, which is driven by reach and uses SMF (Single Mode Fiber), is likely to be a major entry point for silicon photonics."
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