Co-Packaged Optics
Packaging approach that integrates optical engines in the same package as a switch or compute ASIC to cut interconnect power.
At Computex 2026, Wiwynn and eight ecosystem partners showed a full optical scale-up rack built around compute-side optics. It is a useful moment to separate two technologies the supercomputing industry keeps filing under one acronym.
Two acquisitions, two days apart, at adjacent layers of the same stack. Credo's $873M cash-and-stock deal for DustPhotonics and Molex's Teramount buy tell the market the copper-era interconnect champions have decided the AI factory's fiber layer isn't something they're willing to source.
Samsung launched a silicon photonics foundry platform at OFC 2026, targeting 2028 PIC mass production and 2029 CPO services, pitching vertical integration of HBM, logic, packaging, and photonics against TSMC's production lead
Investments in Coherent and Lumentum, OFC 2026 timing, and the conspicuous absence of NVLink CPO. NVIDIA knows optical interconnects are the next bottleneck, and it's moving to own the solution.