Co-Packaged Optics Moves from Promise to Production Planning

At Ayar Labs’ CPO Summit, leaders from Meta, Broadcom, AMD, MediaTek, Lumentum, Wiwynn, and Upscale AI examined what the optical interconnect ecosystem must deliver to meet AI demand at scale. 

For more than two decades, silicon photonics has been positioned as the eventual successor to copper interconnects. Ayar Labs hosted an invitation-only CPO Summit to align the ecosystem around manufacturability, under the theme “Scaling Co-Packaged Optics for the Next Era of AI Infrastructure.” The discussion centered less on whether that transition will occur and more on whether the supply chain, standards, and manufacturing base will be ready to deliver CPO at scale. 

Pat Gelsinger, general partner at Playground Global, former CEO of Intel and VMware, and an Ayar Labs board member, delivered the keynote. Two panels moderated by EE Times journalist Sally Ward-Foxton followed: the first on ecosystem readiness for a surge in co-packaged optics (CPO) demand expected to begin in 2028; the second on the Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI MSA) and its role in aligning the industry around a common optical interface. 

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