Optical Interconnects & Co-Packaged Optics

Vishal Chandrasekar, Director of Product Management at Ayar Labs, presents an optical interconnect solution that scales GPU and switch connectivity through a chip-to-system approach, featuring optical engines fabricated on TSMC's platform and multi-chip packages that integrate eight optical engines to replace copper implementations. The solution, developed with partners including FOCI, Browave, Wiwynn, Alchip, and GUC, targets 2028 deployment.

Helen Xenos, Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena, presents the company's innovations for GPU cluster interconnects including the Nitro linear retimer driver for active copper cables and the Vesta 200 6.4T CPX optical engine.

LK Bhupathi, AVP, Product at Credo, discusses the company's expansion into microLED-based technologies. He explains that microLED solutions use dense arrays of LEDs operating at modest speeds to deliver superior reliability, resilience through spare channel failover, and low single-digit pJ per bit power consumption.

In this Director's Cut video, Dudy Cohen, VP of Product Marketing at DriveNets, explains how Ethernet is evolving through advancing speeds (800G to 3.2T), co-packaged optics (CPO) integration, and scheduling layers that address lossiness to support AI infrastructure with GPU clusters scaling from 8,000 to nearly one million units. He describes how DriveNets has adapted its scheduled fabric technology, delivering superior time-to-first-token performance and lower cost-per-million-tokens compared to proprietary technologies.

Steve Klinger, VP of Product at Lightmatter, presents the company's optical scale-up interconnect solutions, featuring the Passage EVK50 system with DWDM technology that delivers 16 wavelengths per fiber with 400Gbps Tx and 400Gbps Rx. The architecture offers high energy efficiency and compact integration while aligning with the recently announced OCI MSA specifications using an 8-wavelength, 4+4 band interleave model.

Neel Patel, GM of Optical Networking Component Solutions at Nokia, discusses the power consumption challenges of advancing optical modules in data centers, where 1.6T modules consume nearly double the power of 800G modules, potentially adding 1KW to a 64-port switch. He explains how Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) addresses this by leveraging switch ASIC DSPs reducing power consumption.

Debendra Das Sharma, UCIe Consortium Chair at UCIe Consortium, explains how UCIe technology enables chiplet connectivity within packages and package-to-package connections using co-packaged optics for composable systems with dynamic resource allocation. UCIe delivers bandwidth densities with 1-4 orders of magnitude improvement over PCIe and Ethernet.

Vivek Raghunathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics, discusses the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) standardization effort as an important milestone for scale-up interconnects and co-packaged optics implementations. He explains that OCI uses multi-color laser-based technology for GPU-to-memory communication and highlights Xscape's recently announced laser module.

Sanjay Kumar, VP of Products and Marketing at Arrcus, announces the Arrcus inference network fabric at MWC 2026, a solution enabling network operators to deliver agentic and physical AI with low latency, data sovereignty, and reduced cost per inference. He reveals a partnership with Fujitsu combining Fujitsu's Monaka processor with Arrcus' programmable operating system and Oneinity's optical interconnect, along with customer announcements with Lightstorm, demonstrating Arrcus' capabilities across edge 5G, multicloud networking, and data centers.

Near Margalit, GM and VP of Optical Systems Division at Broadcom, presents the newly released OCI MSA optical standard for scale-up networks at OFC26, which reduces latency, power, and cost by utilizing wavelength division technology with four colors of light in each direction instead of high-speed serial PAM 4 lanes.

Manish Mehta, VP Marketing, Optical Systems Division at Broadcom, discusses the company's co-packaged optics (CPO) technology demonstrated at OFC, including Meta's announcement of trials achieving 50 million hours of link flap-free operation. He explains that CPO's highly integrated architecture and high-volume manufacturing processes deliver extremely reliable optical links with superior RAS performance.

Hasan Siraj, VP of Product Management in the Core Switching Group at Broadcom, highlights the Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking Group's 1.0 specification and rack expansion from 64-128 XPUs to 1K XPUs. He also announces Tomahawk 6 shipping in volume production as the first to support 64 ports of 1.6Tbps with 200G SerDes and CPO, the company's participation in the OCI MSA, and the new Jericho 4 enabling cross-data center cluster deployment.

Helen Xenos, Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena, presents the company's innovations for GPU cluster interconnects at OFC, including the Nitro linear retimer driver for active copper cables and the Vesta 200 6.4T CPX optical engine. These solutions provide flexible, power-efficient connectivity options to help customers build high-capacity networks for modern AI infrastructure.

Christian Dupont, CEO of iPronics, presents the company's silicon photonics-based optical circuit switches that achieve reconfiguration times a thousand times faster than previous solutions, enabling rapid network switching for improved reliability and performance in data centers. iPronics is establishing a production line in Thailand to meet volume demands, with their 32-radix switch currently ramping up in production and a 64x64 port OCS chip already fabricated, while planning to double radix annually to improve port density and integration.

Rafik Ward, Chief Strategy Officer & CMO at Lumentum, presents from OFC 2026 showcasing the company's next-generation co-packaged optics technology, including an 800mW laser in an ELSFP module and a dual ELSFP system with 16 multiplexed channels delivering 24 dBm fiber coupling.

Matt Crowley, CEO of Scintil Photonics, presents the company's heterogeneous silicon photonics technology that integrates indium phosphide lasers using a proprietary "backside on box" process. The company's external light sources combine lasers, muxes, photodiodes, and wavelength references on a single die to address AI data center demands for dense wavelength division multiplexing, with evaluation kits shipping to select customers in Q2 and high-volume deployment expected by 2028.

Dave Estes, Hardware Engineer at VIAVI Solutions, presents demonstrations at the Ethernet Alliance booth at OFC 2025, showcasing the evolution toward 1.6 terabit Ethernet capabilities using 200G per lane technology with equipment from major vendors including Arista, Cisco, HPE, Keysight, Teledyne LeCroy, and others. The demonstrations feature various optical interconnects including DSP-based, LPO, and LRO configurations.

Vivek Raghunathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics, discusses the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) standardization consortium formed by major tech companies as an important milestone for co-packaged optics in scaleup interconnects.

Hasan Siraj, Head of Software Products/Ecosystem at Broadcom, presents three networking predictions for 2026 centered on AI infrastructure, including Ethernet becoming the standard for scale-up networking, AI clusters expanding across multiple data centers with Ethernet as the interconnecting fabric, and co-packaged optics going mainstream due to 70% power efficiency gains. Broadcom is investing heavily in these technologies while collaborating with customers and partners to enable these infrastructure transitions.

Sameh Yamany, CTO & Chief AI Officer at VIAVI, discusses convergence of networks, security, AI, photonics, and sensing that will fundamentally change how the industry designs, deploys, and tests infrastructure. He forecasts how high speed data center networking, AI-enabled cybersecurity threats, and use of AI in RAN will have implications on testing needs this coming year.

Vladimir Stojanovic, CTO & Co-Founder of Ayar Labs, outlines the company's optical IO technology that addresses GPU scaling challenges in AI inference workloads by enabling connectivity across multi-rack GPU clusters. The solution achieves 10-20x better performance per watt while supporting direct extended memory connections, marking a significant advance over traditional copper IO approaches.

Steve Klinger, VP Product at Lightmatter, showcases their Passage photonic technology that tackles AI computing bottlenecks by enhancing chip connectivity and bandwidth capabilities. The solution enables high-speed data transmission through silicon photonics and provides seamless integration with existing data center infrastructure through their L series offering.

Vivek Raghunathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics, is developing silicon photonics-based laser solutions to address bandwidth constraints in AI computing systems, where GPU-to-memory bandwidth significantly outpaces package-to-package communication. The company's technology adapts wavelength division multiplexing to create scalable lasers generating multiple wavelengths on silicon chips, with initial products targeting AI fabric and accelerator vendors.

Radha Nagarajan, SVP and CTO, Optical and Cloud, outlines three networking architecture categories and how Marvell addresses all three segments through its Celestial acquisition for scale up, internal development for scale out, and an established business in scale across, including 1.6 terabit per second single wavelength links currently in development.

Annie Liao, Product Management Director outlines Marvell's PCIe retimer product roadmap from generations 5.0 through 8.0, explaining how current electrical solutions will face increasing challenges at higher data rates of 128 and 256 Gbps per lane. She describes their strategic development of optical PCIe solutions, including partnerships for optical modules and cables as well as in-house co-packaged optics (CPO) technology.

Helen Xenos, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing at Ciena, presents the company's comprehensive AI infrastructure solutions at OCP, including their industry-first single carrier 1.6 terabit per second coherent solution and ultra-low power metro DCI with 400 gig coherent pluggables. She also discusses Ciena's recent acquisition of Nubis Communications, which enables linear redrivers for active copper cables and XT optical engines for co-packaged optics applications.

Michael DeMerchant, Sr. Director, Product Line Marketing at Lumentum, explains how the AI infrastructure buildout drives hyperscalers to focus on optical technologies, with Lumentum addressing network power consumption challenges through optical circuit switches, external laser sources for co-packaged optics, and 1.6T partial retimed optics modules. DeMerchant also highlights Lumentum's participation in OCP OCS working group standardization efforts to bring industry vendors and hyperscalers together for common standards that accelerate technology adoption.

Kishore Atreya, Sr. Director, Platform Product Management at Marvell, presents the company's co-packaged optics reference platform featuring a liquid-cooled 1 OU system with 16 6.4T light engines that integrate silicon photonics technology for electrical-to-optical signal conversion. He addresses the significant deployment challenge of managing over 36,000 fibers when scaling to 32 units per rack, emphasizing the need for industry solutions in backplane design and fiber routing for successful rack-level implementation.

Hani Daou, Business Development Manager at Multilane, discusses the critical correlation between interconnect testing and accelerated GPU revenue generation, explaining how current trends including AECs, ACCs, and cable back cartridges enable cost-effective, scalable copper-based GPU connections. He emphasizes that comprehensive testing throughout the interconnect lifecycle is essential for monetizing GPU systems, particularly as the industry transitions to co-packaged optics and near-package optics for hyperscaler applications.

Joost Verberk, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Oriole Networks, explains how AI infrastructure requires a complete rethinking of network architecture with significantly more optical components than current implementations. He emphasizes that Oriole Networks believes AI-focused networks must be fully photonic, eliminating electronic packet switching entirely to meet the demanding performance requirements of modern AI workloads.

Tom Williams, VP, Marketing at Acacia , introduces their new silicon photonic Optical Engine product family designed to support AI infrastructure with 200Gig per lane capabilities across multiple applications. The company's development of a 1.6T PAM4 DSP demonstrates their expansion into data center markets while focusing on power efficiency and enhanced network performance.

Manish Mehta, VP Marketing, Optical Systems Division of Broadcom, presents the company's optical interconnect advances for AI networks at OFC, including their groundbreaking 200Gbps per lane VCSEL technology and production-ready EML laser solutions. The presentation showcases how Broadcom's co-packaged optics reduce power usage by 70% while enabling enhanced integration through the Tomahawk 5 Bailly 51T Ethernet switch connected to Thor 2 NIC and XPU-to-switch optical connectivity solutions.

Kevin Soukup, SVP and GM of Silicon Photonics at GlobalFoundries, outlines the company's progress in co-packaged optics technology at OFC 2025, emphasizing their unique advantages in monolithic wafer technology and two-sided testing capabilities. Through strategic partnerships and advanced manufacturing processes, GlobalFoundries is positioning itself as a key player in the CPO market, particularly focusing on data center applications where scale-up networking dominates transmission needs.

Christian Urricariet, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Integrated Photonics Solutions at Intel, presents the company's latest advancements in silicon photonics at OFC 2025, including their OCI chiplet and 1.6 terabit per second components for pluggable transceivers. Building on their extensive experience in silicon photonics, Intel has achieved significant production milestones with over 8 million transceivers shipped and is expanding their photonic manufacturing capabilities at their New Mexico facility.

Gopalan Iyengar, R&D Optical Engineer at Lumentum, demonstrates Marvell 400G/per lane PAM4 technology operating at 225 Gbaud with Lumentum’s indium phosphide (InP) monolithically-integrated DFB-MZI optical transmitter. The successful demonstration shows clean eye diagrams at 225 PAM-4 gigabaud and 450G/lane speeds, positioning this advancement as a key solution for 3.2T applications.

George Hervey, Principal Architect at Marvell, showcases an innovative co-packaged copper design for switch trays that enhances passive copper performance through substrate-mounted flyover wires and 224G compatibility. The liquid-cooled solution enables direct XPU ASIC to CPO engine connections and supports large-scale multi-rack compute clusters up to 2,000 nodes with a single switching layer.

Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus, details their wafer-scale co-package optics technology that enables optical interfaces across multiple GPUs, delivering significantly higher capacity than traditional solutions. The technology, developed through collaboration with Cerebras and backed by a DARPA contract, addresses key power and cost challenges while providing superior interconnect capabilities for AI compute platforms.

Raza Khan, Product Marketing Director at Semtech, showcases the company's power-efficient AI interconnect solutions including 800G LPO with ACC interconnects at OFC. The presentation highlights Semtech's advancement toward 1.6T and 3.2T capabilities while featuring 50G PON and wireless infrastructure products for 6G applications.

Jeff Hutchins, Director of the CTO Office at OIF, leads the organization's Energy Efficient Interfaces group, which builds upon their 2020 co-packaging work with hyperscalers. The group advances multiple energy-saving technologies, including transmit linear receiver solutions and high-density connectors, while addressing critical power consumption and reliability challenges in AI training environments.

Tim Doiron, VP of Solution Marketing at Infinera, shares his vision for 2025's optical networking landscape, highlighting advancements in Next Generation Optical engines and compact modular systems. His analysis points to significant progress in open optical automation, with network operators embracing multivendor solutions across coherent pluggables, optical line systems, and embedded optical engines.

Armond Hairapetian, Founder and CTO of Terasignal, identifies three major networking developments for 2025, including linear optics adoption for high-speed interfaces, retiming driver advancements, and enhanced link training algorithms. His analysis highlights how these changes will lead to significant improvements in latency, power efficiency, and cost reduction across networking and compute applications.

Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst at 650 Group, presents from TEF 2025 on the $200 billion Ethernet switching market opportunity driven by AI infrastructure requiring multiple interconnected networks for GPUs and XPUs, with bandwidth growth accelerating from 30-40% to 70-80% CAGR. He projects data centers will exceed one billion ports within years, creating multi-billion dollar opportunities across LPO, LRO, ACC, AEC, and CPO transceiver technologies as the industry experiences 4x revenue increases alongside dramatic expansion in speeds and capacity.

Nick Kucharewski, SVP and GM of Network Switching, highlights co-packaged optics (CPO) as a promising technology for scale-up networking, integrating fiber links directly into product packages for higher speed signals with lower power consumption and latency. Marvell's light engine provides to 51 Tbps bandwidth for scale-up switches and supports reliable large-scale deployment.

At #OFC24, Tiger Ninomiya of Accelink hosted a demo of 800G Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO).

Mark Wade, CEO and Co-founder of Ayar Labs, shares the latest in optical I/O for next-gen AI systems.

Manish Mehta, VP Marketing of Broadcom's Optical Systems Division, discusses the company's advancements in optical components, including the development of terabit transceivers and plans to showcase 200G EMLs and 200G VCSELs for use in 1.6 Tbps transceivers.

DustPhotonics’ transmit Carmel-8-IMC chip supports an optical assembly with no free-space optics. Inside the chip, lasers are butt-coupled to the PIC and the fiber is also attached directly to the PIC, thus enabling transceiver designs that can be used for both immersion and air cooling. Ronnen Lovinger, CEO of Dust Photonics, shares a demo.

Robert Shore, SVP of Marketing at Infinera, showcases new solutions including their enhanced GX platform, new aggregation cards, the ICE 7 1.2 terabit optical engine, and optical line system functionality. Infinera will present its suite of intelligent coherent pluggable optics (ICE-X) and new applications for its Open Wave network automation suite.

Robert Shore, SVP of Marketing at Infinera, highlights challenges network operators face in providing longer reach connectivity between AI clusters. Infinera's solution involves the use of indium phosphide, a technology that enables the creation of a single integrated photonic circuit, reducing costs, increasing manufacturability, and lowering power.

Christian Urricariet from Intel's Silicon Photonics Product Division, unveiled the company's first Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) chiplet, a high-density optical IO solution capable of supporting up to 4 terabits per second bi-directionally, enabling it to interconnect CPU or other high-performance chips.

Intel is making a strategic shift from providing full transceiver modules to supplying key chipsets for the growing pluggable market in silicon photonics. At OFC24, Intel also announced 1.6 Tbps components supporting 200G/lane for both the DR and FR formats. Amit Nagra, VP and GM of the Silicon Photonics Product Division, shares highlights.

Loi Nguyen, EVP and GM of Optical at Marvell, unveiled their 3D SiPho engine, a silicon photonics engine that delivers 6.4 Tbps, enhancing speeds for AI applications. Featuring 200G I/O, the 3D SiPho Engine delivers 2x the bandwidth and input/output (I/O) bandwidth density, and 30% lower power per bit versus devices with 100 Gbps electrical and optical interfaces.

Linear receive optics (LRO) and linear drive pluggable optics (LPO) were hot topics at #OFC24. Yosef Ben Ezra, CTO and Founder of New Photonics, introduces a 2nd generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with integrated optical equalizer capable of supporting 800G and 1.6T modules.

Ljuban Kasikovic, SE for Optical, IP, SDN and DC at Nokia, discusses their quantum-safe photonic key creation system that enhances Nokia's existing encryption system, and is being used by vendors in banking, healthcare, and government sectors across Europe, Asia, and North America.

Hector Menendez, Product Marketing Manager at Nokia, has announced the launch of the 1830 PSS (photonic service switch), a Metro-optimized optical platform designed to support diverse requirements at the Metro Edge, particularly beneficial for 5G applications, enterprises needing higher capacity access, and data centers requiring high capacity connectivity.

The External Laser Small Form-Factor Pluggable (ELSFP) IA will define a future proofed external laser source form factor to support co-packaged optical modules. Nathan Tracy walks us through the #OFC24 demo.

Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight, highlighted the transition to 800G and the future need for 1.6 Tbps. Carter also discussed OpenLight's strategic partnership with Jabil to mainstream silicon photonics, the transition to 400G, and the future direction towards 200G lanes.

Are we underestimating the manufacturing requirements for optical modules needed to AI? Adam Carter, CEO from OpenLight, shares some insights.

Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus, discusses the growth of co-package optics and the significant investment by industry giants such as TSMC, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD/Xilinx, SilTerra, and Mediatech. Arabzadeh highlights the company's new generation of co-package optics that includes a self-contained optical engine.

Sivers Photonics is supplying its DFB laser arrays for Ayar Labs’ SuperNova optical interconnect for AI/ML clusters, disaggregated data centers, 6G networks, phased array sensor systems and etc. Anders Storm, CEO from Sivers Semiconductors explains.

Steve Rumsby, Senior Director of Architecture & Platform at Spirent, unveiled the Spirent B3 800G Appliance supporting IEEE 802.3df. The B3 Appliance also supports linear pluggable optics (LPO), an interconnect that uses lower power and latency. He also showcased 800G interconnects (DACs, AOCs, ACC and ZR transceivers) from 11 different partners.

Armond Hairapetian, Founder and CTO of Terasignal, introduces a novel re-timer for linear plugin optics (LPO). The device not only reduces power but also introduces diagnostic features in the chip, allowing end users to assess link quality and extract vital diagnostic information.

Jeff Maki, a distinguished engineer at Juniper Networks and board member of the Advanced Photonics Coalition, predicts an increase in competitors collaborating in 2024 and the emergence of new standards bodies, like the Advanced Photonics Coalition, that can meet emerging industry needs.

Vikas Gupta, Senior Director of Product Management at GlobalFoundries, forecasts growth in the Silicon photonics ecosystem, especially in packaging, with nontraditional OSATs leading and the rise of a cottage industry around this technology. Gupta also predicts an increase in the use and development of novel materials such as lithium niobate, barium titanate, and other organic polymers.

Broadcom's GM and VP of Optical Systems Division, Near Margalit, announced that the company has successfully tackled the main technical challenges of deploying CPO switches and is now focusing on demonstrating the reliability and cost-effectiveness of the core silicon photonics technology. Margalit also addressed concerns about the reliability of the laser component and the time to market, stating that Broadcom is working to shorten the time between the availability of CPO technology for integration with the switch and its market launch.

Are you wondering if today's infrastructure is enough to support the next internet? In this video, Vito Mabruco, Global CMO from NTT, explains why the answer is no and what we need for the next internet. Here are the top three talking points from the video: * Today's infrastructure is not enough to support the next internet, which will require more capacity for 3D animations, virtual worlds, AI, and holograms. * NTT is addressing the need for the next infrastructure by changing the paradigm from electronics to photonics, which they have been using for long-distance transmission and telecommunications. * By replacing electronics with photonics, NTT can reduce power consumption and latency, which will be crucial for delivering the infrastructure of the future. Watch the video to learn more about NTT's vision for building the next infrastructure based on photonics.

Siamak Tavallaei, CXL Advisor to the Board at CXL Consortium, addressed the challenges artificial intelligence and machine learning pose to system architects at the OCP Global Summit. He proposed the use of the CXL specification, UCIe as a transport for running CXL for die to die, and interconnect techniques like photonics to construct large machine learning systems, enabling larger memory blocks and interfaces with emerging memory technologies.

Radha Nagarajan, SVP and CTO of Optical and Cloud at Marvell, highlighted the company's new 800 Gbps ZR/ZR+ coherent pluggable module designed to enhance data center connectivity by converting a switch or router into a transport platform. The module, which leverages Marvell's capabilities at 800 gig, including the DSP, high-speed TIAs, drivers, and silicon photonics, enables a single fiber capacity of 25.6 terabits between data centers, facilitating larger data aggregation.

Max Simmons, Chief Marketing Officer at Micas Networks, presented at the OCP Global Summit 2023 about the company's new switches co-packaged with optics from Broadcom, which deliver up to 30% lower power consumption. Micas Networks showcased their C-package optics technology, which is of interest to large hyperscalers for power savings in data centers, and is eager to collaborate with these companies for its implementation in the future.

Nathan Tracy, President of OIF, recently discussed the organization's future plans, including the development of 200G electrical and 100G linear optics, CMIS activities, and the importance of co-packaging for AI data centers. Tracy also introduced a new project aimed at creating energy-efficient interconnects to deliver industry-standard interoperable solutions for next-generation AI data centers.

That's a lot cooking at OIF these days. 400ZR, 800G Pluggables, CMIS, CEI, Co-Packaging... OIF's, Nathan Tracy makes their predictions for the OIF in 2023.

Vikas Gupta, Director of Product Management and Marketing at GlobalFoundries, shares predictions for 2022. Download AvidThink's 2021 Select Report Collection to explore strategies and opportunities in the Telco, Private Mobile Networks, Service Assurance, SD-WAN and Open RAN space.

Networking infrastructure is sure to evolve quickly during the 2020s. Kazuhiro Gomi, CEO of NTT Research, introduces the Innovative Optical & Wireless Network (IOWN), a new vision for an all-photonic core network enhanced by quantum technology and breakthroughs in privacy and security.