The optical computing specialist will show off two CPO-centric reference designs at OCP 2026 this week:

  • A 1 RU 204.8 Gbps switch tray developed in conjunction with Flex containing two Lightmatter Guide DR laser modules, eight Passage CPO optical engines, and eight vClick detachable fiber connectors. 
  • A 2RU 102.4 Gbps server developed by Lightmatter leveraging Data Center Modular Hardware (DC-MHS) Infrastructure provided by another major ODM partner with the two Guide DR modules, four Passage and vClick units, four XPUs and two CPUs.


Both systems are based around the architectural principles outlined in OCP’s Open Silicon Photonics for AI, and Open Rack Version 3 (ORv3) and Modular Hardware System (MHS) specifications along with fiber connectivity from SENKO. The CPO XPU tray also utilizes the PRISM TMT optical connector technology from Corning. 

The goal behind the reference designs is essentially to give data center operators and their design partners a roadmap for making futuristic hardware that fits into familiar racks (minus the copper backplanes). CPO equipment presents a number of new and unfamiliar challenges: thermal management for integrated lasers, routing 1,925 optical fibers in a confined space, and what about blind mate connectors! The easier Lightmatter and other members of the effort can make it to build, deploy, and maintain CPO systems in existing data centers and familiar racks, the thinking goes, the lower the barriers to adoption. 

“Some of the early deployment (of CPO) starts happening next year and it will accelerate as we get into 2028 and 2029,” said Steve Klinger, vice president of ecosystems and alliances at Lightmatter. “Every company that I am aware of is moving toward deployment scenarios with CPO and/or NPO technologies over the next few years.”

Bijan Nowroozi, head of ecosystem development at Lightmatter and former CTO of OCP, shows off the Lightmatter/Flex switch tray. The vClick detachable fiber connectors were developed in conjunction with SENKO.

“Partnering with Lightmatter brings advanced silicon photonics integration into standard data center rack hardware,” said Colin Chapman, Senior Vice President at Flex. “We brought our engineering and manufacturing expertise to this production validation platform to validate a manufacturing path for integrating co-packaged optics into production systems at scale. Showing it at OCP Global Summit demonstrates how our joint work can help customers accelerate deployment of high-bandwidth photonics at scale, with more efficient use of rack space and cooling.”

Another benefit: the performance gains possible through CPO. By moving the laser from the faceplate to inside the tray, the collaborating companies were able to achieve a 1RU form factor. By contrast, most 102.4T switches available on the market today rely on 2U form factors to accommodate the necessary number of modules in the face plate, which could require going beyond 1RU. Lower profiles equal less rack space, which equals the potential for greater revenue per square foot.


“You just slide it in and it goes,” said Nowroozi. “This is the first time that anyone has ever put together an AI system with this much bandwidth.”

Just as important, these efforts will help cultivate an open ecosystem for CPO. Vendor lock-in, along with reliability, has been one of the chief concerns for potential customers with CPO. The tight coupling of the optics and ASICs in many ways bolsters the arguments of vertically-integrated vendors that performance goals can likely be achieved more readily by sticking with one partner. Successful benchmarks and customer feedback for these systems—and for the NPO/CPO systems being developed through the Open CPX MSA--can show that the open environment approach continues to march on.

Analyst Insight

  • Reference designs mark the beginning of Phase II of the CPO launch. After years of R&D, CPO technology now works. A growing portion of the effort will now be shifted to techniques to ease adoption.
  • Come for the form factor. Stay for the density. The standardization of form factors lowers the barriers to entry, but the real appeal of CPO—greater bandwidth density, <5 pj/bit power consumption for interconnects—will become the driving force for adoption.
  • Vertical vs. Ecosystem: Game On! While the rack might be the new unit of compute, many assume that means a vertical solution. Lightmatter and the OCP community make a strong argument that complete racks will be developed by collaborative partners in an ecosystem, especially as the customer base grows and diversifies. The tension between these two approaches will become one of the major issues over the next 3-5 years.