LPO (Linear Pluggable Optics) transceivers lack full retiming (DSP) circuitry that is common in all prior generations of 400G, 800G and 1. As a result, LPO relies on the host to handle retiming and signal conditioning, unlike traditional fully retimed. The racks of compute engines (GPU, CPU and storage) and the accompanying network infrastructure required for these applications consume significant electrical power from the grid. In a power-constrained AI cluster or data center, every Watt of power that is used by the network is a Watt of power. Among them, Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO), and Silicon Photonics (SiPh) have emerged as the most important technology paths for AI data centers. The demonstration aligned with the LPO Multi-Source Agreement (MSA)'s newly announced 100 Gb/s per lane specification for single-mode optical data transmission, supporting 400G and 800G. This article will introduce CPO and LPO two next-generation data center interconnections, these two silicon photonics modules have good performance in terms of energy consumption and speed, and their low-cost advantage makes them become the mainstream of the data center to upgrade the next. 4x400G or 2x800G? Thanks!Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) eliminates power-hungry DSP chips, slashing module consumption from ~15W to just 0. Silicon photonics enables scalable.
