With the development of optical communication and optical networks, the ability to control chromatic dispersion is paramount in optical applications. Several new methods of dispersion generation were introduced and their principles, developments, advantages, and disadvantages were discussed, including the dispersion system based on modal dispersion, electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and the dispersion system based the real-time Fourier transform(RTFT) to generate equivalent dispersion. The general difficulties of the dispersion generation technology were analyzed and the development trend of it was discussed. By introducing the technology of dispersion generation, its application prospects for optical information processing were discussed.