Co-Packaged Optics (CPO)—the technology that integrates optical engines directly alongside switch ASICs on the same substrate—moved significantly closer to commercial viability in 2025, with major vendor announcements and industry consortium progress.
Key developments:
• Broadloom (Broadcom's CPO initiative) demonstrated a 51.2 Tbps switch with integrated optical I/O at a major industry event, achieving 3.2 Tbps per optical port—far beyond what pluggable modules can deliver.
• Intel presented its latest CPO prototype featuring silicon photonics chiplets bonded to a switch die using advanced packaging techniques.
• The OCP (Open Compute Project) published an updated CPO hardware specification, including thermal management guidelines for co-packaged optical engines.
However, CPO adoption faces significant challenges:
• Serviceability: CPO modules are not hot-swappable, meaning that an optical engine failure requires replacing the entire switch line card—a major operational concern for data center operators accustomed to pluggable module replacement.
• Ecosystem maturity: CPO requires a new supply chain for optical engines, co-packaging services, and test equipment.
• Timeline: Most analysts project that CPO will not reach meaningful commercial deployment before 2027–2028, with pluggable modules remaining dominant through at least 2026.
For SZVAN, the CPO trend reinforces the importance of our pluggable module strategy for the current market cycle (2024–2027), while we monitor CPO developments for potential future product diversification.
