AI’s Next Arms Race Isn’t Just in GPUs — It’s in Optical Interconnects
@Tiger_comments:
3.2T and 6.4T solutions are showing up at ECOC 2026. The next AI bottleneck may be shifting from raw compute to connectivity. As AI clusters scale from thousands to hundreds of thousands of GPUs, one problem is becoming increasingly important: How do you move massive amounts of data between those GPUs fast enough — and without burning too much power? That is exactly why optical interconnects are becoming a bigger part of the AI infrastructure story. At ECOC 2026, Coherent showcased a 3.2T OSFP optical module as well as a 6.4T NPO optical engine designed for next-generation AI scale-up and scale-out networks. The direction is becoming clear: 800G → 1.6T → 3.2T And the upgrade is not just about higher headline speeds. The bigger shift is that optics are moving closer to the chip. As GPU dens