Huawei unveils 7.2Tbps NPO optical-interconnect solution and seeks OIF standardisation

Huawei unveiled its 7.2Tbps NPO solution on 10 September at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), positioning the module as the industry’s first NPO product operating at that speed.

NPO places photonic and electronic integration at the printed-circuit-board level. Huawei argues that this approach is more practical than CPO because it can use existing manufacturing supply chains, offers greater serviceability and allows replacement of a faulty component. These are Huawei’s stated advantages; the available material does not provide independent technical or economic validation against CPO.

The company plans to introduce the technology into its superPoD supercomputing systems and is advancing an NPO standard through the Optical Internetworking Forum. That proposal remains under review and is not an official OIF standard.

For AI infrastructure operators, the issue is not only port speed but the manufacturability, maintainability and interoperability of the optical interconnect architecture used to scale accelerator clusters. Huawei’s initiative could intensify competition between NPO and CPO approaches, as well as competition over future standards and supply-chain alignment.

The wider optical-module market is projected by Yole to reach US$112 billion by 2031, with a 30% CAGR through that point. The source also states that NVIDIA and Broadcom CPO solutions entered mass production in the second half of the current year, but provides neither a precise date nor production details.

NPO’s potential position in AI-cluster interconnects will depend on whether Huawei can build support through OIF and among component suppliers. Its ability to compete with CPO will likely rest on manufacturing practicality, field serviceability and interoperability, while the standard’s formal status and the scale of commercial adoption remain unresolved.