The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, concluded with a consensus on international standards for near-packaged optics (NPO). The agreement is expected to accelerate the industry upgrade and large-scale commercial deployment of NPO, a technology poised to become the preferred interconnect solution for SuperPoDs in the near term. Industry leaders from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi participated in the summit, which focused on NPO evolution, international standards development, and supply chain collaboration.
The consensus on international NPO standards marks a critical step in addressing the growing energy consumption and operational challenges associated with traditional optical modules and co-packaged optics (CPO). As SuperPoDs continue to expand, the demand for higher bandwidth and energy-efficient interconnects has intensified. Dr. Zhao Wenyu, Vice Chairman of IPEC and Deputy Director of the Technology and Standards Research Institute of CAICT, emphasized that NPO offers excellent energy efficiency, a favorable trade-off in port density, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems. He called upon stakeholders across industry, academia, research institutions, and user groups to collaborate on NPO standards and drive the ecosystem from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'.
Industry experts highlighted the urgency of advancing NPO technology. Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, noted that as SuperPoDs expand and SerDes data rates increase, optical interconnect solutions will rapidly advance 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, announced that Huawei has launched the industry's first high-bandwidth 7.2T NPO product and demonstrated dynamic transmission at the IPEC exhibition booth. The product features high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability, while achieving low latency, low power consumption, and low cost through built-in light sources and highly integrated silicon photonics chips.
At the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the IPEC booth showcased the latest achievements of the global NPO industry chain, including high-density connector solutions from leading US and Japanese vendors, NPO modules of various capacities from multiple Chinese vendors, and several NPO switches. This joint exhibition underscored the commercial maturity of NPO technology and reinforced industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem. The consensus on international standards and the streamlined collaboration paths between standards organizations and the industry chain are expected to lay a solid foundation for the large-scale commercial use of NPO, marking a milestone in the development of the global NPO industry.
