Special Session: Which ?PO Will Win Which Market and When?

As AI data centers continue to scale, there is a growing demand for denser electrical and optical interfaces that deliver lower channel counts, reduced loss, and higher power efficiency. In the electrical domain, with 400 Gbps per lane on the horizon, conventional pluggable optics architectures are facing increasing challenges related to RF trace loss, signal integrity, and connector reliability. In the optical domain, large-scale AI data center deployments are expected to require millions of fibers, driving the need for solutions that reduce fiber counts and optical port density.

Where should electrical and optical interfaces be placed? Answers to this question have given rise to a range of architectural paradigms, including Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), Near-Packaged Optics (NPO), Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO), eXtra-Dense Pluggable Optics (XPO), and both Fully Retimed (RTO) and Half-Retimed (LRO) pluggable optics.

This workshop will examine the roadmaps for next-generation electrical and optical interfaces and explore viable solutions for enabling 400 Gbps-per- lane data center applications. We will navigate the landscape of high-speed electrical interconnect technologies, including low-loss RF traces, flyover RF cables, advanced substrate designs, and Z-mount connectors, with a focus on signal integrity, power efficiency, and high-density integration.

In parallel, invited speakers will provide insights into emerging optical interconnect architectures and pluggable optics technologies. Discussions will address the technical challenges, ecosystem considerations, and deployment trade-offs associated with CPO and NPO, while highlighting recent advances in LPO, XPO, and related pluggable optics solutions. The workshop will also cover advanced multiplexing and density-enhancement techniques, including wavelength-division multiplexing, polarization multiplexing, and multi-core fiber technologies.

Panellists will primarily be drawn from industry leaders across the ecosystem, complemented by representatives from academia who are at the forefront of research and innovation in this field.