Optical interconnects in the data center took center stage at NVIDIA's GTC 2025 conference in March when Jensen Huang announced two network switches incorporating co-packaged optics (CPO), which combine photonics and electronics in a single integrated I/O package for a higher. Optical interconnects in the data center took center stage at NVIDIA's GTC 2025 conference in March when Jensen Huang announced two network switches incorporating co-packaged optics (CPO), which combine photonics and electronics in a single integrated I/O package for a higher. TSMC's COUPE silicon photonics platform entered mass production in April 2026 — the foundry event that makes CPO accessible beyond the largest hyperscalers. Broadcom's Tomahawk 6 Davisson (102. 4 Tb/s) and NVIDIA's Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand switch are shipping in 2026; both use TSMC COUPE and. Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) is an advanced heterogeneous integration of optics and silicon on a single packaged substrate that addresses next generation bandwidth, power, and cost challenges. CPO incorporates a wide range of expertise in fiber optics, digital signal processing (DSP), ASICs, and. STMicroelectronics enters high-volume PIC100 silicon photonics production for AI data centers. 6T co-packaged optics mean for fabric design, power budgets, and CCIE DC candidates. 9B by 2029, fueled largely by AI data centers. Read on to learn key CPO trends shaping AI systems in 2026 and the challenges designers will need to. Co-packaged optics is one of the most talked about innovations in advanced packaging right now, and it's for good reason.
