With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, optical chips and optical devices, as key basic technologies, have attracted unprecedented demand growth under the wave of AI. The advantages of high speed, high bandwidth, and low energy consumption of optical chips and optical devices make them play an important role in AI applications, and they are increasingly becoming a key element in driving the progress of AI.
Optical devices are divided into two categories, active and passive, according to whether they need external energy to drive the photoelectric quasi-transformation, and they play different roles in the optical communication system, in which active devices are the heart of the optical transmission system and passive devices are the joints of the optical transmission system.
Optical device industry is in the middle stream of optical communication industry chain, providing devices, modules, subsystems and other products for downstream optical system equipment vendors. At present, the proportion of active devices in the optical device industry is as high as 78%, and the stronger manufacturers that produce active devices also produce passive devices, and active, high-end products.
The continuous evolution of artificial intelligence technology has brought about massive data processing and transmission needs, and the traditional electronic chips and optical devices in the face of these needs gradually revealed a bottleneck. In this context, optical chips and optical devices have become one of the solutions by virtue of their high speed and large bandwidth. Optical chips use optical signal transmission instead of traditional electrical signal transmission, greatly increasing the data transmission rate and thus better meeting the needs of AI applications.
Figure: Artificial intelligence boom drives soaring demand for optical devices
Artificial intelligence technology can be applied to the production process in the passive device industry to realize intelligent control. Through real-time monitoring and analysis of the production process, production planning can be optimized and resource waste can be reduced, thus improving production efficiency. Optical chips are growing in demand in key technology areas such as data centers, cloud computing and artificial intelligence chips. Data centers need to process and store massive amounts of data, and high-performance optical chips can speed up data transmission within the data center, effectively reducing energy consumption and latency. Cloud computing platforms need to process and transmit huge amounts of data and complex applications, and the high bandwidth characteristics of optical chips make cloud data processing and transmission faster. These advantages make optical chips an important force in promoting the development of data centers and cloud computing.
The development of artificial intelligence technology also promotes the trend of automated production in the component industry. Automated production relies on a large number of intelligent devices and robots, which are often integrated with a large number of passive components, such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, and so on. As the scale of automated production expands, the demand for passive components will grow accordingly.
The development of artificial intelligence is also continuously driving the demand for passive components. On the one hand, with the increased demand for data processing and transmission, the application of passive components such as optical chips and optical devices in the field of artificial intelligence will continue to expand; on the other hand, the strengthening of the trend of automated production will also lead to the growth of demand for passive components.
