The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, concluded on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center with a landmark consensus on international standards for near-packaged optics (NPO). The agreement, backed by global industry leaders including OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi, marks a critical step toward the large-scale commercialization of NPO technology. By aligning on standards, the industry aims to overcome fragmentation and accelerate the transition from proprietary solutions to an open, interoperable ecosystem.
The importance of this consensus cannot be overstated. As SuperPoDs continue to expand in scale, traditional optical modules are consuming unsustainable amounts of energy, and co-packaged optics (CPO) faces constraints such as a closed industry chain and complex operations and maintenance. 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), emphasized that NPO, with its excellent energy efficiency, favorable port density trade-off, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems, is expected to become the preferred solution for SuperPoD interconnect in the near term. He called upon stakeholders across industry, academia, research institutions, and user groups to join hands in developing NPO standards and driving the NPO ecosystem from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'. This consensus provides the necessary framework for vendors to develop compatible products, reducing the risk of vendor lock-in and fostering innovation.
Industry experts underscored the technical and commercial momentum behind NPO. 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, necessitating opto-electronic collaborative design to overcome advanced packaging challenges. 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. He noted that with key technologies like built-in light sources and highly-integrated SiPh chips, the product achieves 'high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability' while delivering 'low latency, low power consumption, and low cost'. Such advancements signal that NPO is not just a theoretical solution but a commercially viable one.
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, featuring vendors from countries like China, the US, and Japan, strengthened industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem. The convergence of international players around a common standards framework is expected to lower barriers to entry, stimulate competition, and accelerate the deployment of NPO in data centers and high-performance computing environments.
The success of the summit and exposition marks a milestone for the global NPO industry. By reaching a consensus on international NPO standards and streamlining collaboration between standards organizations and the industry chain, the foundation has been laid for large-scale commercial use of NPO. As the demand for higher bandwidth and energy-efficient interconnects continues to surge, the agreements forged at this summit will likely catalyze a new phase of growth, enabling the industry to meet the challenges of next-generation computing infrastructures. For more information on IPEC and its initiatives, visit IPEC.
