THE 200GLANE CPO PUSHES OPTICAL INTERCONNECT

CPO phases out optical modules

Due to the rise of 5G, IoT, AI, and high-performance computing applications, datacenter trafic has grown at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30%. The conventional pluggable optics increases at a much slower rate than that of datacenter trafic. Finally, this section remarks on the next milestone in the future of pho-tonic interconnect for HPC networking. Co-packaged Optics (CPO) is an advanced packaging tech-nology for optoelectronic devices that involves upgrades in system architecture, chip fabrication, and packaging.

CPO Optical Module Investment

In early March 2026, Nvidia injected $2 billion each into photonics manufacturers Lumentum and Coherent, securing future production capacity and technology rights for advanced optical components with a total investment of $4 billion. GF's SCALE solution, or Silicon photonics Co-packaged Advanced Light Engine solution, is the industry's first Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI MSA) capable platform, exceeding the requirements for the OCI MSA's optical interconnect specification for modern AI scale-up. , May 5, 2026 — GlobalFoundries (GF) has introduced an optical module solution for co-packaged optics (CPO). Cignal AI initiates its first quantitative CPO forecast; Over 30 million CPO ports expected to be shipped annually by 2030. Over the coming years, CPO is poised to see a dramatic uptick in demand, as data center operators push to expand the limits of AI.

Risks of CPO and Optical Modules

Due to the rise of 5G, IoT, AI, and high-performance computing applications, datacenter trafic has grown at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30%.

Is there still hope for CPO optical modules

Small amounts of CPO may start to appear in 2026, but real deployment at scale looks more likely to arrive in 2027/8 or later. Co-packaged optics (CPO) technology, a key enabler for next-generation data center architectures, promises unprecedented bandwidth density and power efficiency by tightly integrating optical engines with switch silicon. As AI clusters push beyond 100 Tb/s per node, the gap between what silicon can generate and what traditional copper interconnects can deliver is widening fast. From Jensen Huang showcasing CPO switches at GTC 2025 to a wide range of vendors demonstrating optical engines integrated inside ASIC packages at OFC 2025, CPOs are everywhere. However, it's worth noting that Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Arista and a long-standing visionary in data centre. In recent years, optical transceiver technology has been steadily shifting toward placing the optics closer to the Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).

CPO Printed Circuit Board Optical Module

Co-packaged optics (CPO) refers to integrating optical transceivers and switching ASICs within a single package. Instead of connecting the switch chip to pluggable optical modules through electrical traces on a printed circuit board (PCB), CPO brings the optics directly adjacent to. This article provides a comprehensive overview of CPO optical modules, exploring their technology, benefits, challenges, and the pivotal role they play in future data centers. This groundbreaking approach significantly reduces power consumption by 30-50% compared to. Third, distance itself has become a problem: latency, energy per bit, and signal integrity degrade sharply with electrical reach.

THE 200GLANE CPO PUSHES OPTICAL INTERCONNECT

CPO phases out optical modules

CPO Optical Module Investment

Risks of CPO and Optical Modules

Is there still hope for CPO optical modules

CPO Printed Circuit Board Optical Module

Get In Touch

Connect With Us

Email

South Africa (Sales & Engineering HQ)

Headquarters & Manufacturing