Replacement technologies for optical modules

This article unpacks the technologies powering this leap (silicon photonics, advanced modulation, and co-packaged optics), compares deployment paradigms, and delivers a tactical upgrade roadmap that balances performance, cost, and scalability. From Jensen Huang showcasing CPO switches at GTC 2025 to a wide range of vendors demonstrating optical engines integrated inside ASIC packages at OFC 2025, CPOs are everywhere. However, it's worth noting that Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Arista and a long-standing visionary in data centre. Although co-packaged optics (CPO) and on-board optics (OBO) have been proposed to increase bandwidth density, these approaches introduce significant challenges in field serviceability, scalability, and manufacturability, making them difficult to deploy widely in hyperscale environments. 6T optical modules differ primarily. Co-packaged optics (CPO) is a disruptive approach to increasing the interconnecting bandwidth density and energy eficiency by dramatically shortening the electrical link length through advanced packaging and co-optimization of electronics and photonics. CPO is widely regarded as a promising. The optical module industry is at a critical inflection point. As 800G modules transition from early adoption to mainstream deployment, the industry is already developing the next generations: 1. [PDF]