Huawei rallies optical interconnect ecosystem with the industry’s first 7.2T NPO demo

Details: STAFF WRITER; Category: Vendors; 16 September 2026; 459 views

At the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) in Shenzhen in September, Huawei demonstrated its third-gen optical interconnect product for SuperPod, the 7.2T NPO (near-packaged optics), which will be deployed in its future SuperPoD series.

More than a product showcase, the demo was also meant to instil confidence in the feasibility of NPO technology among the broader ecosystem amid industry-wide efforts to standardise NPO technology as a mature, cost-effective and scalable option for the optical interconnect industry at the moment.

At a media roundtable following the CIOE expo, Dr Man Jiangwei, Director of the Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory at Huawei, highlighted the growing importance of optical interconnects in AI computing clusters, and the need for the technology to evolve to meet demand in the age of AI data centres.

The surge in computing power demands has led to a continuous increase in the scale of AI clusters, reaching tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of cards, which puts additional pressure on the signal interconnect between cabinets, cards, and chips to keep up with that demand.

With conventional electrical interconnects approaching their physical limits in transmission distance, optical interconnects have become the critical technology path for extending transmission distance and overcoming performance bottlenecks – so much so that optical communications market is forecast to reach US$112 billion by 2031, according to Yole Group.

“This shift in demands has brought unprecedented opportunities to optical interconnects, which are no longer merely transmission pipes, but become the ‘main artery’ of compute clusters,” Dr Man said.

NPO vs CPO

Among various optical interconnect solutions, currently there are two technical options being batted around for optical interconnect technology: near package optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO). With traditional DSP pluggable optics (DPO), the optical engine is placed on the front panel of the switch. For NPO, the engine is located at the edge of the chip package substrate, while CPO integrates the engine on the same substrate as the switching chip.

While the CPO option of integrating the optical engine with the chip delivers extremely high performance with the lowest possible power consumption and latency compared to DPO and NPO, this comes at the expense of significant trade-offs – CPO requires advanced packaging, and is constrained by a closed industry chain, as well as complex O&M.

“CPO relies on both the pluggable optical module supply chain and the semiconductor supply chain,” Dr Man explained. “While each is mature on its own, CPO requires integrating them – and once combined, that maturity drops significantly. This integration challenge is actually the biggest obstacle CPO faces in current industry applications.”

In contrast, NPO – with its excellent energy efficiency, a favourable trade-off in port density, strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems and simpler O&M.

“Compared with CPO, the NPO technology is more mature, making it easier for production ramp up and it's easier for maintenance,” Dr Man said. “So NPO stands as the most mature technology at the moment, and it is also a practical choice in this day and age.”

NPO standardisation needed

Numerous industry bodies and companies are aligning behind NPO, as illustrated by the NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by International Photonics and Electronics Committee (IPEC) and Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), held in Shenzhen the same day as CIOE. Participants included China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi.

Despite the wide appeal of NPO as an optical interconnect solution, the standardisation process for NPO has been fragmented across several standards organisations. However, in May 2026, the OIF officially initiated its NPO standard project at its Q2 meeting, with backing from more than 40 leading companies worldwide, marking the industry chain's endorsement of NPO technology.

Huawei has played a very active role in uniting vendors across the industry chain to drive NPO standardisation forward, Dr Man said.

“Within these standards organizations, people are discussing around these two choices, NPO and CPO, which one is better?” said Dr Man. “So, in order to promote the initiation of the NPO standard project, we need to collaborate with other parties along this industry chain to foster this synergy.”

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), also emphasized the significance of a unified global standards for NPO at CIOE. “We call upon stakeholders across industry, academia, research institutions, and user groups, to join hands in developing NPO standards and driving the NPO ecosystem to evolve from ‘usable’ to ‘easy-to-use at scale'”.

Huawei’s NPO evolution

Optical interconnects have been a key component of Huawei’s SuperPoD series of next-gen computing clusters, starting with its 400G SR8 DPO in Atlas 910C SuperPoD, and continuing with its 800G Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) module, in the Atlas 950 SuperPod, which is also the first LPO module with vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) technology.

Its third-generation product is the 7.2T NPO module demonstrated at CIOE. Huawei says the 7.2T NPO boasts five advantages: high bandwidth, high availability, high reliability, low latency, and low power consumption.

“For example, we've shortened latency from 100 nanoseconds down to just 10 nanoseconds, and power consumption is reduced by around 60%,” Dr Man said. “When you put all these factors together, we're able to bring down the cost by a large margin.”

Moreover, Dr Man added, the 7.2T NPO is a mature technology in the sense that it’s a manifestation of the various technologies Huawei has accumulated over the years, including lasers, silicon photonics, chips and VCSEL.

“These technologies have been tested and proved in the NPO and switch settings,” he said. “Huawei has 20 years of experience in packaging technology and about 15 years in optical chip tech, and we're the first to introduce the 7.2T module.”

This supply chain maturity gives NPO another advantage over CPO: mass producibility – in other words, the ability to ramp up production within a short space of time.

“NPO is built upon the traditional pluggable optical module industry chain, which provides a very solid foundation to support this kind of rapid volume ramp-up and mass producibility,” Dr Man said.

Driving the NPO ecosystem

The objective of Huawei’s demo of its 7.2T optical module at CIOE was to test its feasibility and possible application in a specific product, which Dr Man said “should instil some confidence into the whole industry.”

That said, it will be the maturity of the industry chain and the coming OIF NPO standard that will drive the entire ecosystem forward – and Huawei is actively pushing both, Dr Man added.

At Huawei, we've built very deep foundations and accumulated extensive experience in optical interconnects. Across different generations, we've been the industry pioneer in advancing our optical interconnect products,” he said. “We are very willing to collaborate with all manufacturers across the industry – whether in terms of product form factors, industry chain synergy, or the standardization ecosystem – to jointly advance products across various generations.”