The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, concluded with a significant consensus on international standards for near-packaged optics (NPO). This agreement marks a pivotal moment for the optical communications industry, as it lays the groundwork for the large-scale commercial deployment of NPO technology and signals a unified global effort to advance next-generation interconnect solutions.
The summit gathered top players from across the global industry chain, including experts from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi. Their collective focus on NPO evolution and international standards development underscores the industry's recognition that traditional optical modules are reaching their limits, particularly as SuperPoDs continue to expand in scale. The consensus reached is expected to accelerate the industry upgrade and enable the widespread adoption of NPO, which offers superior energy efficiency, port density, and compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems.
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 critical need for collaboration: "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 from "usable" to "easy-to-use at scale."
Industry leaders also highlighted the technical and commercial momentum behind NPO. Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, noted that as SuperPoDs expand and SerDes data rates increase, optical interconnect solutions will advance more rapidly towards 6.4T NPO, requiring 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 stated 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."
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 featured high-density connector solutions from leading US and Japanese vendors, 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 strengthened industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem.
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 paths between standards organizations and the industry chain, the event has laid a solid foundation for the large-scale commercial use of NPO. This development is crucial as it addresses the pressing energy and scalability challenges of modern data centers and high-performance computing, ensuring a sustainable and interoperable future for optical interconnects.
