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AI supply chain term

Retimer / optical DSP

A retimer (or optical DSP) is a chip that cleans up and re-times a high-speed electrical signal; inside optical transceivers the DSP also encodes and recovers the data carried on light.

What it means

As signalling rates climb, an electrical signal degrades over even short distances across a board or through a connector; a retimer regenerates it, recovering the clock and re-transmitting a clean copy. In pluggable optical transceivers, a DSP does the analog heavy lifting — driving modulation formats like PAM4 and correcting errors — so data can be carried reliably as light. These parts sit at the boundary between chips and the optical fabric, roughly one per port, so their volume scales directly with the number of links in a cluster. The DSP is a lever because it enables higher lane rates and longer reach; it is also a cost and power burden, which is why linear pluggable optics (LPO) aim to remove or simplify it. That tension makes the retimer a focal point of optical roadmap debates.

Why it matters to investors

Retimers and optical DSPs scale per port, so their demand rises with fabric size as clusters add links. Transceiver and component makers such as Coherent (COHR), Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI), Eoptolink (300502.SZ) and InnoLight (300308.SZ) sit at this electrical-to-optical boundary, and are exposed to whether LPO designs displace some DSP content.

Companies on this part of the chain

Applied Optoelectronics, Inc.AAOICoherentCOHREoptolink Technology Inc., Ltd.300502.SZInnoLight300308.SZ

Named to show where the term sits in the AI supply chain — research, not advice, and never a recommendation to buy or sell.

Related terms

Optical transceiver / photonicsA module that converts electrical signals to light (and back) for optical links.SerDesSerializer/Deserializer — the silicon that drives high-speed electrical links.Linear pluggable optics (LPO)Linear pluggable optics is a lower-power optical module design that removes the power-hungry DSP chip and drives the laser with a simpler analog signal path.800G optics800G optics are pluggable optical transceiver modules that move data across a data center at 800 gigabits per second.

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THE ENTITY is an educational read on the AI supply chain — research, not investment advice. It explains how the chain works and who sits where, never price targets or buy/sell calls.