Overview:
Conventional pluggables such as QSFP and OSFP have enabled decades of data center scaling through modularity, serviceability and a competitive vendor ecosystem. However, as ASIC switch bandwidths increase beyond 51.4T to 102.4T and 200T, the architectures face mounting challenges with respect to electrical channel loss, power consumption, front-panel density and thermal constraints. To overcome these limitations, optical engines are moving from the front panel right onto the switch ASIC substrate as Co-Packaged Optics (CPO). Switch ASICs and CPO chips are usually manufactured and integrated together by the same chip vendor. This report looks at how NPO and pluggable CPX modules can be used to decouple the optics from switch silicon and hence preserve multi-vendor sourcing.
Number of Pages: 7
Published Date: June 2026
