If you’ve been following the evolution of high-density optical interconnects for data centers and AI compute infrastructure, you know the big bottleneck we’re solving for right now: standardization across all of our most critical packaging scenarios. Today I want to break down a really promising emerging open standard that’s flying under the radar right now: Open CPX.
CPX isn’t just another connector spec. It’s an open, unified standard built to cover three of the most important interconnect use cases our industry is working with right now: Conventional Pluggable Connectors (CPC), Near-Package Optics (NPO), and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO). That’s the big value prop right here: one standard that works across all three packaging architectures, eliminating the fragmentation that’s been slowing down development.
Let’s get into the technical details that matter:
Ultra-Compact Form Factor: CPX uses a 0.5mm pitch, and it’s designed for solder attachment on HDI PCBs. That density is a game-changer for packing more I/O into the limited footprint we get in modern co-packaged and near-package designs, without sacrificing signal integrity.
Complete System Spec: This isn’t just a pinout. The standard fully defines mechanical structure, thermal performance, electrical pinout, mechanical envelope, and electrical interface requirements. That means component suppliers and system designers can work from the same playbook from day one, cutting down on integration headaches.
Broad Design Compatibility: It natively supports both high-speed and low-speed connector designs, and works seamlessly across CPC, NPO, and CPO architectures. Whether you’re shipping legacy pluggable systems today or prototyping next-gen co-packaged optics tomorrow, you don’t need to re-qualify an entirely new connector ecosystem.
Looking at the prototype samples, you can already see how this translates to real hardware: the compact connector fits cleanly on HDI substrates, and the flexible architecture allows for multiple mechanical configurations for both CPO and NPO integration (you can see the different stacking options in the diagrams below). That flexibility is going to be critical as our industry figures out the long-term winning architecture for co-packaged optics — we don’t have to pick a winner today to start standardizing interconnects.
Right now, the standard is still under active development, but that’s exactly why it’s worth watching. Open, collaborative standards like this are what move our industry forward faster than proprietary locked-down designs. For companies working on next-gen optical interconnect, aligning with an open standard like Open CPX early means less rework down the line, and a larger supply chain to draw from.
I’m excited to see how this develops. Keep an eye on this space — unified open standards for high-density interconnect are exactly what we need to keep scaling bandwidth for AI and cloud infrastructure.
