DUBLIN -- A new study of PCB, material and interconnect trends and needs for electronics assemblies for high-speed applications explores the implications for next-generation architectures and the supply chain as data rates increase.

In "Opportunities in the Supply Chain for High-Speed Electronics, 2012-2018," Research and Markets notes that, in network infrastructure, systems supporting 100G Ethernet are emerging and serial transmission rates are more than doubling from 10Gbps to >20Gbps. The next generation of standards will tackle 400G and the solutions for this will require 40-50Gbps serial data. These and high performance computing requirements, will be the factors which will drive more widespread adoption of optical backplanes and silicon photonics when signal integrity, interconnect density and thermal management budgets cannot be realised with printed circuit boards.

In the wireless communication sector, the introduction and advancement of 4G technology will have implications for base station and transceiver design. New generations of eNodeB base stations are more compact in size, more intelligent and more flexible in performance as base station controllers are no longer required and an access network comprises several base stations connected to each other and directly accessing a gateway to the backbone network.

The research group's report includes technology roadmaps for high-performance system architectures, a detailed looked at the high-performance laminates available for the next generation of systems, and forecasts PCB and laminate demand to 2018.