The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, was held on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center. The event convened top players from the global industry chain, including experts from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi. The summit focused on NPO evolution and international standards development, with in-depth discussions on ecosystem upgrade and industry chain collaboration. A consensus on international NPO standards was reached, laying a solid foundation for the industry upgrade and large-scale commercial use of NPO.
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 the urgent need for NPO standards: "As SuperPoDs continue to expand in scale, traditional optical modules are consuming huge amounts of energy, and co-packaged optics (CPO) faces constraints like a closed industry chain and complex operations and maintenance. In contrast, near-packaged optics (NPO) – with its excellent energy efficiency, a favorable trade-off in port density, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems – is expected to become the preferred solution for SuperPoD interconnect in the near term, and coexist and evolve alongside CPO and other solutions in the long 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 to evolve from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'.
Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, highlighted the rapid advancement towards 6.4T NPO: "As SuperPoDs expand in scale and GPUs and switch chips increase their SerDes data rates, optical interconnect solutions will advance more rapidly towards 6.4T NPO." He noted the urgent 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, showcased Huawei's progress: "In exploring the optimal interconnect solution – NPO – for SuperPoDs, Huawei has launched the industry's first high-bandwidth 7.2T NPO product and successfully conducted a demonstration of dynamic transmission at the IPEC exhibition booth. Furthermore, with the introduction of key technologies like built-in light sources and highly-integrated SiPh chips, this NPO product features 'high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability' while achieving 'low latency, low power consumption, and low cost'."
At the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the IPEC booth showcased the latest achievements of the global NPO industry chain, particularly those 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.
The success of this summit and exposition marks a milestone for the development of the global NPO industry. The consensus on international NPO standards and streamlined collaboration paths between standards organizations and the industry chain lay a solid foundation for the large-scale commercial use of NPO. The joint exhibition of industry ecosystem products has strengthened industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem. For more information, visit IPEC and OIF.
