10 Mar 2027
12:30 - 13:30
Expo Theater III
The OCP’s Short-Reach Optical Interconnects Initiative (SROI) is advancing the market for short-reach optics, focusing on scale-up connectivity in AI pods and clusters. Following last year's OFC panel introducing this consensus-based effort, the workstream has now published its second foundational white paper. It defines SROI as a distinct optical reach regime and establishes the system-level requirements for optical adoption in scale-up fabrics, where copper reach at 200 Gb/s lane rates becomes a structural constraint as pods grow from tens to hundreds of accelerators.
With the problem space now defined, this panel turns to the harder question: how does the ecosystem deliver? An expert panel will examine the published targets: energy per link end converging toward single-digit pJ/bit, cost trending toward passive copper on a per-bit basis at the total system level, and hardware reliability approaching semiconductor-grade FIT rates. The panel will also debate the architectural choices they force: pluggable versus co-packaged and on-board integration, serviceability versus density, lane-rate flexibility versus supply chain convergence, and the resiliency techniques needed where a single flap stalls memory-semantic traffic across a tightly coupled pod. The discussion will also look past copper substitution to what compliant short-reach photonics unlock next such as disaggregated memory, composable I/O fabrics, and optically connected chiplets. The session will feature open and frank discussion among the panelists regarding use cases, implementation trade-offs, and recommendations for coordinated standards development.
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