The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) announced the creation of the Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) Working Group. CPO will develop technical guidance and standards for implementations, encouraging the adoption of co-packaged optics. The effort focuses on the optical connectivity and remote laser sources necessary to make co-packaged optics a reality.

The collaboration between end users and suppliers of technology that are positioned to address these topics for hyperscale data centers complements existing co-packaging standardization efforts, COBO said.

“To support advancements in bandwidth requirements, COBO has advanced to co-packaged optics for enablement of robust fiber optic networks with higher, more reliable, and more efficient throughput,” said Tiger Ninomiya, chair of the CPO Working Group and a COBO board member. “Stakeholders involved in co-packaging applications are lending their expertise to advance the industry in a standardized way that meets all anticipated future requirements and to increase adoption with ease in this rapidly expanding market.” 

“It is critical that the industry develops standards and guidance to enable a robust co-packaging ecosystem,” said Mark Filer, principal engineer for Azure Hardware Architecture at Microsoft. “COBO is the perfect forum to leverage its membership’s expertise to address the optical connectivity challenges for the co-packaging of optics with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).” 

COBO is a nonprofit organization of optical engineering leaders overcoming limitations associated with moving optics inside networking equipment through development of innovative industry specifications.