The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, concluded with a consensus on international NPO standards, a development that could reshape the optical interconnect industry. The summit, held on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, gathered top players from across the global supply chain, including experts from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi. Their agreement on standards for near-packaged optics (NPO) lays a solid foundation for industry upgrade and large-scale commercial use, signaling a critical step toward meeting the escalating demands of SuperPoDs and next-generation data centers.
The importance of this consensus lies in its potential to address pressing challenges in optical interconnects. As Dr. Zhao Wenyu, Vice Chairman of IPEC and Deputy Director of the Technology and Standards Research Institute of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), noted, traditional optical modules consume huge amounts of energy as SuperPoDs expand, while co-packaged optics (CPO) face constraints like a closed industry chain and complex operations and maintenance. NPO, with its excellent energy efficiency, favorable port density, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems, is expected to become the preferred solution for SuperPoD interconnect in the near term. "We call upon stakeholders across industry, academia, research institutions, and user groups, to join hands in developing NPO standards and driving the NPO ecosystem to evolve from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'," Zhao said. This collaborative approach is essential for overcoming the limitations of current technologies and ensuring a smooth transition to more advanced optical solutions.
Industry experts underscored the urgency and direction of NPO development. Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, highlighted that as SuperPoDs expand and SerDes data rates increase, optical interconnect solutions will advance more rapidly towards 6.4T NPO. He emphasized the need for opto-electronic collaborative design to overcome challenges introduced by advanced packaging processes. Dr. Man Jiangwei, Director of the Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory at Huawei, revealed that Huawei has launched the industry's first high-bandwidth 7.2T NPO product and demonstrated dynamic transmission at the IPEC exhibition booth. With key technologies like built-in light sources and highly-integrated SiPh chips, this product achieves "high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability" while delivering "low latency, low power consumption, and low cost." Such innovations are crucial for enabling the next generation of data center infrastructure.
At the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the IPEC booth showcased the latest achievements of the global NPO industry chain, particularly from the US, Japan, and China. The display included high-density connector solutions from leading vendors in the US and Japan, as well as NPO modules of various capacities developed by multiple Chinese vendors, alongside several NPO switches, demonstrating a high level of commercial maturity. This joint exhibition strengthened industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem. The success of the summit and exposition marks a milestone for the global NPO industry, streamlining collaboration paths between standards organizations and the industry chain. By reaching a consensus on international standards, the industry is now better positioned to accelerate the large-scale commercial use of NPO, which could lead to more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable optical interconnects for the AI and cloud era.
