By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Aug 8 -- China officially released on August 1 the first CPO (co-packaged optics) technology standards, with nine items including “Semiconductor and Integrated Circuit: Requirements for Optical Interconnect Technology Interface (T/CESA 1266-2023)”. It is a derivative of the chiplet standard previously developed by company members and experts from China Computer Interconnect Technology Alliance (CCITA).

This standard is currently the only CPO technology standard in China, according to CCITA. It is a significant milestone for China's IC industry in breaking through Moore's Law and promoting independent technological development of silicon photonics chips. The standard will effectively address the explosive demand for computing power from data centers, cloud computing, and large artificial intelligence models, said CCITA.

The CPO standard defines the system architecture of co-packaged transceivers used in switches and servers. It specifies the technical requirements for the overall layout, optical characteristics, electrical characteristics, digital management interface, mechanical structure, and other aspects of network interface cards of switches and servers related to co-packaged optical transceivers.

CCITA and the China Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI) collaborated on the initiation of the CPO standard in June 2021. A total of 123 Chinese experts and 52 companies held 31 online seminars and three offline meetings over the last two years for the standard. In June 2023, a draft of the standard was approved.