The 50G SFP56 SR optical module is an optical module with a transmission distance of 100m and a maximum rate of 53.125Gbps. The transmission distance can be up to 70m or 100m through OM3 or OM4 multimode optical fiber. It is widely used in 50GBASE-SR Ethernet links.

ETU-LINK's 50G SFP56 SR optical module uses PAM4 high-order modulation technology, which can transmit twice the amount of information relative to the NRZ signal under the condition of 25G physical bandwidth, achieving a single-channel 50G transmission rate.

In the 5G era, 50G wireless optical modules will be commercialized on a large scale. It is estimated that 50 million 25G/50G optical modules will be needed in the 5G fronthaul field alone, and the mid-transmission field is also a new growth point. In the future, the access layer and convergence layer of 5G will need to introduce 25G/50G rate interfaces, while the core layer will need to introduce interfaces with rates above 100G.

In the 5G mid-haul scenario, the 50G module using PAM4 modulation will become the main solution. If it is widely adopted by the 5G bearer network, the demand will reach tens of millions in the next few years. The demand for 50G optical modules mainly comes from the construction of 5G bearer networks. In the data center scenario, 50G optical modules are concentrated in the connection between the NIC and ToR in the super large data center.

With the further improvement of server performance, the connection from the leaf to the Spine layer in the data center is gradually migrating to 100Gbps, and the 50GE technology helps to reduce the number of top-of-rack switches required in the data center. Therefore, in order to improve the network performance of the data center, upgrading from the existing 10Gbps to 50Gbps has become quite realistic.