Poll: What factors will deepen the use of optics in AI scale-up networks?
As AI pushes bandwidth, density, power, and latency requirements faster — it is forcing new thinking around scale-up, scale-out, co-packaged optics (CPO), and optical interconnects.
Each of these three concepts plays a unique role.
Scale-up makes a single server or system more powerful by adding resources like CPU, memory, or storage. In contrast, scale-out adds more independent systems to distribute the workload across a network.
Meanwhile, CPO places optical communication components directly next to processing chips inside the same physical package. A key element of CPO is that, instead of using traditional copper wires to send electrical signals across a circuit board to separate pluggable optical modules, CPO converts electrical signals into light right at the edge of the main processor.
But questions remain about these approaches. Where are the biggest constraints? Which technologies are ready? And are industry roadmaps moving fast enough?
As we ramp up to the upcoming ECOC 2026 | 52nd European Conference on Optical Communication, Lightwave Online wants your perspective.
Lightwave will host Inside the AI Fabric: Scaling the Networks Behind Tomorrow's AI Factories on September 23 during ECOC 2026. Hosted by Lightwave’s publisher Peter Fretty, this interactive roundtable panel will include representatives from Lumentum, Marvell, and Nokia.
We’d love to hear your perspective on this exciting development. We’ll issue other polls on similar topics as we ramp up our coverage of this year’s ECOC show.
About the Author
Sean BuckleySean Buckley
Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove.
