Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
September 10, 2026
Global Industry Leaders Reach Consensus on NPO Standards at Shenzhen Summit
TLDR
- Huawei unveiled the industry's first 7.2T NPO product at the NPO Standards Industry Summit, gaining a key advantage in high-bandwidth optical interconnects.
- The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, achieved consensus on international NPO standards, defining pathways for ecosystem collaboration and large-scale commercial use.
- Global industry leaders agreed on NPO standards to enable energy-efficient optical interconnects, reducing power consumption and supporting sustainable growth of data centers worldwide.
- At the NPO Standards Industry Summit, vendors from China, the US, and Japan showcased connectors, NPO modules, and switches, demonstrating high commercial maturity of the NPO ecosystem.
Impact - Why it Matters
<p>The consensus on international NPO standards reached at the NPO Standards Industry Summit is a pivotal moment for the optical interconnect industry. As data centers and AI workloads continue to explode, the demand for higher bandwidth and energy-efficient interconnects has never been greater. NPO technology offers a promising solution by combining the energy efficiency of co-packaged optics with the compatibility of pluggable modules, potentially reducing power consumption and costs while enabling the next generation of SuperPoDs. The collaboration between major players like Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, and Broadcom signals a unified push towards standardization, which is crucial for accelerating commercialization and fostering a robust ecosystem. This matters because it paves the way for scalable, high-performance computing infrastructure that can support emerging technologies such as AI, cloud computing, and big data analytics. For businesses and consumers alike, this means faster, more efficient, and more sustainable digital services in the future.</p>
Summary
The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, convened on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, bringing together top players from the global industry chain including experts from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi. The summit focused on NPO evolution and international standards development, with in-depth discussions on ecosystem upgrade and industry chain collaboration. Ultimately, a consensus on international NPO standards was reached, laying a solid foundation for the industry upgrade and large-scale commercial use of NPO. The event was covered by Media OutReach Newswire.
Dr. Zhao Wenyu, Vice Chairman of IPEC and Deputy Director of the Technology and Standards Research Institute of CAICT, emphasized that as SuperPoDs expand, traditional optical modules consume huge amounts of energy, and co-packaged optics (CPO) faces constraints like a closed industry chain and complex operations and maintenance. In contrast, near-packaged optics (NPO) – with its excellent energy efficiency, favorable port density trade-off, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems – is expected to become the preferred solution for SuperPoD interconnect in the near term and coexist with CPO long term. He called upon stakeholders to join hands in developing NPO standards and driving the NPO ecosystem from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'.
Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, highlighted that as SuperPoDs expand and GPUs and switch chips increase SerDes data rates, optical interconnect solutions will advance more rapidly towards 6.4T NPO, urging opto-electronic collaborative design to overcome advanced packaging challenges. Dr. Man Jiangwei, Director of the Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory at Huawei, stated that Huawei has launched the industry's first high-bandwidth 7.2T NPO product and demonstrated dynamic transmission at the IPEC exhibition booth, featuring 'high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability' while achieving 'low latency, low power consumption, and low cost'. At the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the IPEC booth showcased the latest achievements of the global NPO industry chain, particularly from the US, Japan, and China, including high-density connector solutions and NPO modules of various capacities, demonstrating high commercial maturity. The success of the summit and exposition marks a milestone for the global NPO industry, strengthening confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content distributed by Media Outreach. Read the original source here, Global Industry Leaders Reach Consensus on NPO Standards at Shenzhen Summit
